Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
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Basements That Rise Above For families with kids, Nancy Hill of Nancy Hill Interiors loves to create fun art areas with washable floors, furnished with easels and tables. She might carve out space for multipurpose game tables or tuck a pinball machine under the stairs for whimsy. She says to keep in mind that kids are only young for a short period of time. Make sure the space can grow with the family. A Way Out c Because basements are often mostly if not completely below the ground, special care must be taken to pro- vide a way to escape in the event of a fire. Michael Gray of archi- tecture, interior, and construction firm Carpenter & MacNeille recommends having at least two points of egress from a basement. Most homes already have a way out in the form of a walkout or a bulk- head. Utilitarian bulkhead doors can be replaced with something more in line with the decor of the newly renovated basement. For the larger budget, the bulkhead can be changed into a nice, finished stairwell. For example, one of the homes that Carpenter & MacNeille is working on has an exterior sun porch with a set of stairs leading down. The firm will remove the existing staircase and add a small, window- encased addition that leads up from the basement. The homeowners 42 will no longer have to walk up the stairs in the rain, but instead come into a nice mudroom and go upstairs from the inside. Work With What You Have @ The foundations of newer homes are usually deep enough to accom- modate basement renovations. But what about older homes with shal- low, cave-like spaces, giant sooty furnaces smack-dab in the middle of the room, and webs of plumbing, wires, and ductwork? Sometimes a renovation won't work. But other times, when the desire and the money are there, builders can dig a little deeper to make the magic happen. Gray and his team at Carpenter & MacNeille are working on a basement in an old home that required excavating another three feet WellesleyWeston Magazine | fall 2012 COURTESY OF JAN GLEYSTEEN ARCHITECTS, INC./PHOTO BY SAM GRAY COUR TESY OF CHARLES RIVER WINE CELLARS/ELITE MEDIA SOLU TIONS COURTESY OF CHARLES RIVER WINE CELLARS