OCR Text |
Show THE LOFT Attic becomes perfect hideaway By GARY KRINO Copley News Service Ken Ulbrich's house-guests house-guests dou't wake up with backaches from sleeping on couches anymore. Now he puts them in the single bedroom of his second-story apartment and he heads for the 115-square-foot loft he recently had carved out of a dusty attic space above his dining din-ing room. "I got the idea when I saw a loft at a friend's house," said Ulhrich, who owns a beauty salon and the four-unit apartment building he lives in. "The loft looked good," he said, "and I needed something to solve my houseguest problems. prob-lems. "I knew as soon as he (the contractor) knocked the wall out and I got an idea of what the loft was going to look like, that I'd done the right thing," Ul-brich Ul-brich said. "It's a very warm room. It's like going back to the womb. It changed the feeling of the apartment. It makes it feel like a house." After knocking out the wall situated above the dining room and overlooking overlook-ing the open-beam-ceiling sun room, the contractor went to work converting the space into what has become be-come Ulbrich's favorite room in the apartment. Plywood flooring (covered (cov-ered with beige low-pile carpet) was installed over the dining room ceiling joists and the pitched ceiling ceil-ing was covered with 1-by-6 spruce panels. Because the wall that was removed helped support the roof, the exposed rafters were shored with lengths of redwood red-wood and now have the appearance ap-pearance of heavy beams. A large window that brings a striking ocean panorama into the loft was installed in the exterior wall and the wall was finished fin-ished with rough, grooved fir plywood. The other two walls were painted a pale yellow. They're dry wall with a rough adobe-plaster finish. In one of the walls, a niche was built to hold a television. The walls are washed with track lights mounted along the center beam at the ridge of the roof. An 18-inch railing made of Douglas fir 2-by-2s and re-sawn redwood l-by-6s guards the open end of the loft, and a ship's ladder made of Douglas fir 2-by-6s leads from the sun room to the new room. Because the loft is only 5 feet 2 inches at its highest point, Ulbrich was faced with a furnishing problem. He solved it by keeping everything ev-erything simple, close to the floor and in scale with the size of the loft. The bed is a king-size mattress, and two dark wicker breakfast-in-bed trays serve as tables. ta-bles. Large brown floor pillows pil-lows for lounging complete the look. Budd Elders, the contractor con-tractor who completed the job in two and one-half weeks, has the following tips for people planning to put a loft in their homes. Check for heating and cooling ducts. If they're in the way, they'll have to be moved. Have an electrician do all electrical work and remember that you'll want -several electrical outlets in your new room. Have an engineer or architect check the joists under the floor of the new room to make sure thay can handle the increased weight load. "In most small lofts," Elders said, "all you're really going to be adding is a person, and most joists can handle the extra load." Install an electrical switch for the loft in a room below it so you won't be scrambling into a dark room. If you remove a wall, have an engineer or architect archi-tect check roof rafters to ensure they're strong enough to carry the load without the support wall. Put a telephone in the loft so you won't have to negotiate the ladder when you get a call. |