(gentle jazz music)
- I've known Donnie since I was 15 years old.
We went to high school together.
We went from a long-distance relationship
to 500 square feet.
Long distance relationships prepare you
to be able to work through many issues.
And so one of those issues that can arise
living in a small space,
is that there isn't much separate space.
So when people say
well you could just go to your separate spaces,
the only separate space is the bathroom!
- When I first bought the place,
I thought it was just gonna be my bachelor pad.
I had Ikea furniture, I had a gigantic entertainment system,
all the things that a bachelor could really want.
But when Nicole moved up and we go married,
it ended up evolving.
- Well we decided that we that we wanted to
be able to stay in this space
as long as humanly possible for two people.
And something needed to happen
so that the space was more functional.
And we needed some sort of division
to make it feel like we had more than one space,
and I could feel like I was doing my thing
while he's doing his thing.
And what we settled on was this loft
where we have our bed up above,
and just having the bed off of the main floor,
already gives us so much more space than we had before.
- Design took a little bit of time
and fabrication took a little bit of time
because everything was custom hand-made.
We took the standard system,
which is basically stud wall construction
and we replaced these wood members
with these huge concrete panels.
And the spacing of our concrete panels
then became storage space, closet space, work spaces.
And then we locked everything together
with a platform sleeping on top,
which structurally made the whole loft sound.
- I love the top of the loft
because I like to work on my bed, I always have,
and so I can go up to the top and its a really nice space
that's above everything and I can work up there.
My favorite part about the loft is the custom ladder.
One of our dreams
was always to have a rolling library ladder,
we just didn't know how we would get it.
- We found a guy who works out of a space called TechShop,
here in San Francisco.
He's a local craftsman and he custom built a solution
just particularly for this loft, and it turned out amazing.
We always dreamed of having more people come and visit us
and the Murphy bed helped solve that problem.
- [Nicole] Traditional Murphy beds are a lot thicker
and so they would have eaten up a lot of the space
that we have under the loft.
But we have these amazing architects
who custom built a Murphy bed that would be a lower profile
so that wouldn't eat up the space underneath the loft.
And when it's tucked away it's a whiteboard,
which is really great for our space
because it's right next to Donnie's standing desk,
so he'll draw out his ideas for his apps,
but I also use it for shopping lists and packing lists.
What I love about this standing desk
is it puts him right in the corner
where he's out of the way
and he can put on his headsets and rock out late at night.
When I want to go to bed up top,
I don't even know that he's down there working.
- The closets for me, are huge.
I love personal organization
and I love closet systems from The Container Store,
the Elfa shelving systems.
We measured and we gained a ton of storage.
Almost, in a way, it feels like a walk-in closet to me.
It's definitely the biggest closet that I've ever had,
so I'm really happy with it.
- I decided I would give him that closet in the loft.
But that's 'cause I've got all these closets back here,
so my closet's still bigger.
Throughout the loft there are spaces above and below,
where we've put in different cubbies and boxes
that pull out of varying sizes.
Both of us, at times, work out of our home,
so it's really important for us
to be able to have places to put papers
and all sorts of business stuff.
- It forces us to organize and categorize.
So that's probably been one of the coolest side effects
with the cubby holes and the boxes that we keep in there.
When this place was a bachelor pad,
I never had really much space to entertain anybody.
So the addition of the dining nook has been really cool.
- They built this really great bench into the loft design
and then we have a dining table
that pulls out from a side console
and folds into this really great dining room.
We could probably get eight people at that table
because it has multiple sections.
It's also a second desk and it tucks away to the side
when we don't want to have dinner.
Because we have a lot of windows,
there isn't a lot of wall space in our unit.
And the wall that we had our TV on before,
got taken up by the loft.
- So what we have now is an 84 inch projection screen TV
that pulls down from the ceiling
and when it's tucked away, you barely even know its there.
I love it because we can watch it
from down in our recliner chairs,
perched up on top of the loft, its a dream come true.
What I think the loft has done for our relationship
is actually just made us closer.
That's been one of the biggest blessings.
- The best part is really to see
the clients actually using the space.
When they actually stand at the desk
or when they climb up there and sit and watch TV,
we're happy with the way it turned out.
- [Nicole] This loft was really our way
to extend the life of this unit for us.
I would say having this loft changed our life.
- [Donnie] It took a one-dimensional bachelor space
and made it a multi-dimensional family space.
- What I imagine will happen
is that we'll have our first child in this space
and we'll stay here until the kid is walking.
And that's one of the reasons we have the Murphy bed,
because when I'm nine months pregnant,
I doubt I'm gonna climb up that ladder.