A Basement Entertaining Space in Cheadle
A Cheadle basement turned into a bar, cinema, games room and gym, designed room by room over several years.
Cheadle is about twenty minutes from the showroom. The housing is mostly inter-war semi-detached and detached property, with larger houses towards Cheadle Hulme and a scattering of Victorian villas closer to the village.
Houses of that period share a problem worth naming: generous plots and modest rooms. The plot is why so much work here starts with an extension, a loft or a basement, and the rooms are why the result usually needs designing rather than decorating.
The showroom is at York House, Vicarage Lane, Bowdon WA14 3BA, open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm. More about the showroom.
Extensions, basements and the rooms they leave behind
A rear extension solves the kitchen and creates two new problems: a long room that needs lighting as three separate schemes rather than one, and an original front room that has quietly become the least used space in the house. Both are design problems rather than building problems, and both are cheaper to solve at the drawing stage.
Basements are the other Cheadle pattern, and they are almost always phased. Services, ventilation and lighting circuits are set by the first room and have to allow for the last one, or the gym ends up with the wrong power and the cinema with the wrong ceiling.
Inter-war houses and their proportions
Bay windows, picture rails and rooms about four metres across are the standard hand in Cheadle. Curtains want tracks that stack clear of the bay so the daylight is not lost, storage generally has to be built into the alcoves rather than bought as furniture, and a room this size will take one large piece far better than three medium ones.
Where the ceilings are lower than a period house, lighting matters more than colour: several layers at different heights, on separate circuits, so the room works at breakfast and at nine in the evening.
Questions we get asked
Do you work on basement conversions?
The interior design, yes: the layout, finishes, joinery and lighting. The excavation and building work is done by your contractor, and it is worth involving us before the first fix rather than after.
Is there a minimum project?
No. A single room is a perfectly normal piece of work, and a design fee of £300 covers one room.
Can you design around furniture we are keeping?
Yes. Bring photographs and measurements of anything staying and the scheme is built around it.
A project in Cheadle
A basement in Cheadle turned into the entertaining floor of the house: a bar, a small kitchen, a cinema room, a games room, a bathroom and a gym, designed room by room over several years.