THE STARTING POINT

A 656 sq ft pool house divided between a poker room and sleeping quarters — inherited from a previous design firm with an unresolved floor plan and no spa program. The mandate was a complete gut-rehab from the studs out.

CONSTRAINTS DOCUMENTED

On-site measurement and photography captured the HVAC bulkhead position, window placements, and structural limitations that would define every layout decision. All constraints were modeled in SketchUp before a single wall was framed.

WHAT THE SHELL MADE POSSIBLE

Stripping the space to its bones allowed the full wellness program — sauna, steam, cold plunge, massage room, glam vanity — to be distributed across the footprint without compromise. The blank shell was the brief, realized.

The vanity area presented a unique design challenge: how to achieve a continuous wall surface for privacy and light-blocking, while still allowing easy access to the natural light of the window behind. The solution: sliding wood fluted panels engineered with the contractor to retract behind the mirror, fully opening the wall when daylight is wanted and disappearing when it isn't.

A mid-project switch from outside mount Roman shades to full blackout inside mount roller shades introduced an immediate problem: the depth for an inside mount required one more inch than the existing casing offered. With decorative millwork already planned throughout the space, the solution was to build out the wall depth at each window — concealing the hardware completely and turning a technical constraint into a design feature. The detail was sketched on site with the GC, modeled in SketchUp, and approved before anything was built.