Malden Second Floor Expansion

The owners of this charming Malden MA workers cottage asked us to make their second floor work more efficiently, including carving out space for a new bathroom. The family loves spending time in nature and brought us a photo of a local seaside quarry on a sunny day as the inspiration for the finishes palette. We paid special attention to texture, scale and color.

The primary hurdle to updating the layout was the heavily eaved roofline, which made the second floor ceiling very low and limited how close you could stand to an exterior wall. The HDB team stripped the project area back and created a new dormer along the full length of one side of the building. We stole a little bit of space from each of the bedrooms to nestle a new bathroom in at the top of the stairs, but made sure that the bedrooms were still large enough to accommodate full and queen size beds with nightstands on each side. We also vaulted the ceilings to evoke the feeling of airiness.

On the exterior we mimicked the existing deep eaves and the client chose a fun shingle pattern appropriate for the period of their home.