Case Studies

Torrey Hills Children’s Rooms

Twin girls were sharing a bedroom that had a French door to a balcony as the only ventilation. The room was a furnace during the summer. The girls were transitioning from cribs to twin beds and we wanted to avoid bunk beds.

There were two bedrooms, the one they were sharing and the one that was right next door that was almost a mirror image of the one they shared.

The program (problems to solve) was this:

• Increase the ventilation
• Give the girls space for their toys and books
• Add more light if possible
• Give them space where they can play together
• Design for each child’s personality
• Design the closets for their clothes now with options to reconfigure as the girls grew

The solution was arrived at by:

• Closing in the balcony and adding windows to the front and sides of the balcony.
• We extended the common wall between the two bedrooms right to the front of the balcony.
• Pierced the exterior walls on both sides of the house and added clerestory windows up high so we didn’t have to sacrifice wall space on the inside but solved the ventilation problem.
• Opened the common wall between the rooms so that when the pocket doors were open they had great play space between the rooms.
• Window seats and shelving were built in under the windows in the closed balcony area giving ample space for toys and books.
• The closets were fitted with low hanging bars so they could easily reach their hanging clothes. Drawers were built in and shoe cubbies, too. The closet doors were changed to swinging rather than sliding doors so each girl would have full access to all the space in her closet and could see what was there.

When you look at the photos, there are two exterior shots…the “before“ one showing the balcony open; the after one showing the balcony closed in and the clerestory window on the side exterior wall. It looks very integrated with the front of the house and does NOT look like an add on.

The interior shots are of the single dark room with the cribs which is “before” and the “after” shots showing the large play area with the pocket doors open, shelving and window seats and one of the fitted closets.

The girls were fun to work with and as you can see their color preferences are very different.

We did use an architect on the project because structural changes had to be made when the front wall opening onto the balcony was removed.

All in all it was a great project and with extraordinary results.