Bed Stuy Reno

Parlor Floor Plan Showing New Door Location and Circulation to Front Parlor

As G and I tackled the last of the outstanding items necessary to get our bottom duplex ready to rent out, we turned our attention to access to the front parlor. Previously, in order to create privacy in the house, we had separated the bottom duplex with the top floor apartment (ours is a two-family, three-story house) by adding a wall in the parlor level hallway, and keeping the front parlor pocket doors to the hallway closed and locked. The effect of this however, meant that in our duplex, the front parlor could only be accessed by passing through the back parlor. (See the plan above.) Since we used the back parlor as our bedroom and the front parlor as a work studio/guest bedroom, it meant that guests had to pass through our room to get to theirs. It wasn’t a big deal for us, but when it became clear we would be moving to Philly and renting out our space, we decided to add a new doorway to the front parlor from the hallway within the duplex. That would allow for direct access to the room from the hall without having to pass through the back parlor, and hence it could function as a completely independent (and hence private) guest bedroom.

The first thing we had to do was see if it would even be possible to fit a door where we wanted it to go. We had found a free salvage door (thanks, DIBS!) that matched the height of our existing parlor doors, but thankfully was quite narrow. After a little exploratory probing, it became clear that the door would (just) fit. The completed project adds such functionality to the bottom duplex, that we were kicking ourselves for not doing it earlier! But the future is unknown – and whether or not we will be back to enjoy this unfettered front parlor access ourselves, it was definitely a good move to put it there.

Installation of New Front Parlor Door (Left Col. – Hallway / Right Col. – Front Parlor)