Getting Crafty About Space

After undertaking the daunting move from Seattle to Rhode Island, Kim and Rik Jenkins decided renting a home for the first year would be the best way to acclimate after a cross country move. No house felt quite right until they walked through the door of a delightfully flawed, three-bedroom, two-bath, one-level ranch-style home in East Greenwich built in 1961.

“As soon as we walked into this home we knew that even though it wasn’t perfect yet, it could be,” says Kim, a real estate investor and interior designer who launched her own company, Jenkins Designworks. “It had one major flaw though: It was one bedroom short.” The thing that sealed the deal, however, was the large, unfinished attic space that stretched the length of the home that could become that fourth bedroom.

The biggest challenge when planning the renovation was how to lay out the suite so it would best maximize the existing space, while preventing the need to rip the roof off completely, which would be a complete budget buster. Ultimately they accomplished this with the addition of two 12-foot wide dormers, which satisfied the spatial needs for the master bedroom, an office, two additional seating areas, a walk-in closet and a water closet.

Kim’s biggest piece of advice when it comes to budget: “With creative thinking, unexpected sourcing and sometimes a little elbow grease, very affordable materials can look like a million bucks!”