Tall skinny apartment

On Monday of this week, during my lunchtime walk (I work downtown), I happened across a blopped-on section to a string of three-story office buildings and restaurants.  I peered in through the dusty first-floor windows and saw that there was a car parked in there, and there was storage (piled up old furniture) at the nose of the car. Also that there were fairly high ceilings.

I took some measurements of the exterior of the building -- using the small tape measure that I always have in my pocket (doesn't everyone?) -- and found that this appendage to the main building probably had an interior of 2.8m by 7.8m (I'll let you convert it to feet...).

I also noticed that, based on the windows, there were two floors of living space after the parking level.  So, windows on the long side, and the ends, but just wall on the other long side.


Based on all this, on the way home (on the bus) I sketched out a reasonably detailed "What if I Lived There" floorplan, with the first floor with the car, a stairway going up, and some storage and a chinup bar and weight stack under the stairs.

The second floor was the (very small!) kitchen and kitchen table, and sitting area (with a t.v. and built-in bookcase).  The stairs going to the top floor emerged in the small woodworking room.  A hallway passed the (very small) bathroom on the right and storage cupboards (above the stairs from the below level) on the left, and emerged into the bedroom/music room.  I managed to cram a single bed, small closet, and built in desk in there -- with room for a keyboard stand and pair of amps as well.  Guitars and basses would be stored under the bed.


The next day, I revised this floor plan a bit, using white-out.


On Wednesday, I totally re-thought my layout.  The first floor -- with the single-car parking space -- now had a very efficient woodshop in the area at the front of the car, which is under the stairs leading up.  This includes room for a woodworking lathe, a modest amount of lumber storage, and a rolling ''archive-style'' shelves.

The main floor is essentially the same as the previous version, although the kitchen is better thought-out and therefore roomier.

The top floor is more open, in that instead of two rooms at either end of the floor I now have a unified open space.  Except for the bathroom, in the corner of the floor nearest to the stairway opening, there is very little "hallway".

In the previous version I'd intentionally sequestered the woodworking from the music gear/bedroom; but because the current version has the woodworking downstairs, I've made the end of this floor a larger music room/bedroom.  The drums are up on a waist-high riser, with storage underneath.  The front of the drum riser is recessed, with a clothes bar (i.e. my closet).  The bed is a Murphy bed (i.e. folds into the wall when not in use).  I now have room for two four-drawer filing cabinets, next to the drum riser.  And I have an additional stairway, up to the roof.

The roof has a small rooftop garden (mostly fruits and veggies), a storage shed for the gardening supplies and additional lumber (but not too much, as it would be a pain to carry it down three flights of stairs), and a small carport-like structure that shields my punching bag and multi-gym from the rain.


I think my floorplan would actually work -- and I enjoyed figuring it out.

I think I would've made a decent architect.  Not the outside of the building, so much -- but I like working out floorplans.


--GG