Smart Design for Dual-Purpose Rooms

If you’re planning a kitchen remodel or are ready to spring for custom carpentry in another room, try to incorporate an integrated work surface or sleeping space into your plans. It can be something as simple as an deep shelf at table height that you can pop a laptop on and pull a chair up to, or as elaborate as a built-in desk or sewing niche with drawers below and storage cabinets above. For guest quarters, a long, wide window seat with a cushy cushion can double as a sleeping nook. When they turned a spare bedroom into a home-office and guest-room combo, Ray and Lisa Bird of Oakland, Calif., added a room-length desk surface as well as built-in file drawers, cabinets and open shelving to create his-and-hers workstations along one wall, plus a pull-down Murphy bed and coordinating cabinetry along another wall. "Because the cabinetry wraps around the adjoining wall, everything has a complete, built-in look," Lisa says.