Add screen room storage to your home remodelling plan
The main goal of most home remodelling plans is to gain more space. This might be to make room for a family expansion, to give everyone some breathing space or to have more space for entertaining. Whatever your home remodelling goals are, you’ll inevitably end up with more room for storage, and a screen room is a prime example of how to use your new space for storage.
What is a screen room?
A screen room at its most essential is an addition to your home that sits out back usually on top of your existing deck or patio (but you can build it directly onto the ground). It’s a simple construction; instead of big windows and walls, you have large mesh screens that protect you from the wind, bugs and dirt that make it tough to sit outside all summer. The roof is usually a simplistic studio roof that slopes down from your home. All of this simplicity makes a screen room one of the cheapest home extension projects out there, and it has a good return to value ratio when you finally come to sell your house.
Storage benefits of a screen room
A screen room is a simple structure that sits on the top of your deck or patio immediately outside your home. While your deck or patio space can hold chairs, couches and other furniture specifically for entertaining, the lack of external walls makes it hard to use the outdoor space for storage. While the walls of a screen room are predominantly made from mesh, you gain the external wall of your home as a place to put storage devices in. Creative screen room storage ideas include:
- Bookcases – it’s amazing how much space bookcases can take up in your home, so by moving a lot of them to your screen room, you’ll gain a lot more space throughout your home. The presence of books in the screen also sets the tone for a calm, contemplative space and will encourage you and your family to use it as an at-home library.
- Display cabinets – the chances are high that you’ll use your new screen room space to entertain, whether it’s big parties or just as a place to eat with your family during the warmer months. To make the space feel more inviting, install glass fronted display cabinets along the wall to show off your best art pieces or your formal dinnerware. You can choose open shelved display cabinets, but remember the Calgary winds and summer storms that could damage these items.
- Ottomans and storage chests – some screen room owners choose to highlight the external wall as a “feature wall” especially if the siding is exposed brick or an exotic wood cladding. In this situation, you can still generate extra storage space by purchasing low level storage like ottomans or wooden storage chests. Not only will these provide you with hidden storage for things like blankets and pillows but they’ll also double up as room decorations as you can use similar fabrics and patterns as your furniture to disguise these hidden storage ideas.
What are you storing?
Of course, when you’re thinking about adding screen room storage to your home remodelling plan, you need to think about what it is that you are looking to store, as this will help you decide the kind of storage that you’re looking for. It’s also worth discussing storage options with your screen room building contractor as they may be able to hook you up with some built in storage ideas that could be built during the screen room construction. This will help your screen room storage blend in more naturally and reduce your overall costs
Full room storage
While many people include a screen room in their home remodelling plan as a way to give themselves additional entertaining or living space, it’s also entirely possible to put your entire screen room over to permanent storage. Here are some potential ways to use your new screen room as a permanent storage solution:
- Mudroom – one popular use for a screen room that includes a lot of storage is to turn it into a mudroom. This provides a stepping stone for people entering your home to take their shoes, sandals or boots off, and store them out of the way along with their coats and other outside accessories. You can create this effect with a hard tile floor and plenty of hooks and seating with storage underneath, as well as an enormous shoe rack!
- Seasonal gear – another good way to use your screen room for storage is to turn into the location where you stock your seasonal gear. This might be your family ski set for the winter months, and kayaks and beach toys for the summer. In either case, it will be incredibly useful to have these easily available rather than clogging up your garage or having to dig into your basement. Most of the seasonal gear is waterproof, but you’ll need some larger storage lockers for those things that might get damaged by the rains that can still come through the mesh screens.
- Working garden shed – finally, the proximity of your garden to the screen room makes it the ideal place for a working garden shed. Think of this like a cooler greenhouse where you can store all your garden tools, and build in some work benches so that you grow and repot plants without having to worry about the wind or sunburn. You’ll of course need to finish the look with some higher shelves with indoor plants growing for inspiration.
All of these screen room storage options will require some permanent changes as to how you build the room, so you do need to be sure that you’re not going to want to remodel the room any time soon. However, having the certainty of where certain big or bulky items will be stored can help to create space in other areas of your home, so you should consider these alternative uses as you create your home remodelling plan.
