Design: A Pet Project
At Myers Constructs, we love animals of all kinds, and we enjoy when our designs benefit our customers’ four-legged friends.
As part of any design-to-build™ project we undertake, we spend some time in the beginning learning about our customers’ goals and priorities, what problems will be solved with the renovation, and, of course, who will use the finished space. If our clients have pets, we want to know that information so we can keep it in mind from the outset and plan for it. In designing kitchens, for example, that can be as simple as making sure there’s a place for the dog’s food bowls to avoid being kicked, a place to store those big bags of food, the leash (and, these days, the dog’s sweater!). Sometimes, we find that folks have gotten so used to working around their pet bowls that they don’t even realize that they are in the middle of their pathway.
But each house — and each pet — is different. Knowing the specifics about how people and their pets use spaces helps us to develop creative solutions that, if considered in the initial planning, does not necessarily increase the overall price. One of my favorite designing with pets stories was a multi-bathroom project for a great stone house in Chestnut Hill. The homeowners had four cats, and one of the main bathrooms housed two litter boxes. Like many older bathrooms, the room had two entrance doors. Our goal was to figure out how to build them a wonderful new bathroom that felt right for the humans and made sense aesthetically for their house but kept the litter boxes tucked away in the beautiful new space. I love the solution we created for this bathroom – without changing the location of the walls. Using the same bathroom footprint, we increased the shower size and added a bench and with convenient storage for toiletries in the shower. We also created lots of additional storage space that wasn’t there before. We used just one entrance door for the humans, but we kept two entrances for the cats since we didn’t want to disturb their habits too much. Tucking the litter boxes under the storage unit kept them out of view, but allowed plenty of room to pull them out and clean them. And, just as important, we made a point of not running the radiant heating under the litter box area. A win-win for everyone — humans and cats alike. We love making the whole family happy with projects like this.
