Bungalow Basement

basement family room

Arts and crafts style bungalows are a common and popular housing type here in the Twin Cities and are often located in some of the most popular neighborhoods. However, there are some challenges in using these spaces for modern life styles because the houses are small by today's standards. A lot of customers like to renovate the basement to add a family room/tv room/play room and or home office. In a traditional arts and crafts style home the front of the house is dominated by a fireplace and formal dining room with oak built ins. Many people hate to mar the historic look of this part of the house with a widescreen TV and the kids gaming system. So a popular option is to keep the historic charm upstairs and add a family room in the basement.

In this case we wired up the family room for sound and a big screen TV/Gaming system. On the other side of the basement is a home office, which helps free up living space upstairs. Also, this house like many bungalows, has a small galley kitchen, so we built pantry cabinets at the bottom of the stairs to provide some extra kitchen storage. The flooring here is cork from Natural Built Home in Minneapolis. It's great for basements as it's warm under foot and has few of the mold and allergen issues associated with putting carpet in a basement.