Priya Nair draws basement layouts for a living. She is an interior drafting technologist in Calgary, which means she spends her days moving walls around on a screen and then hearing, months later, how the room turned out. Downstairs Living is where she writes about the second half of that story.
We move walls around on a screen. A bathroom shifts two feet because a drain is where a drain is. A ceiling drops because a duct has to get from one end of the house to the other. Then a client sends a photo months later and we get to see whether the compromise was the right one.
Because the same handful of decisions decide whether a lower level feels like a floor of the house or a room you visit. Light, ceiling height, sound, where the storage went, how the floor feels underfoot. Very little of that is about how expensive the finishes were.
Nothing here is a construction drawing. Anything structural, anything that moves plumbing, and anything that touches an exit belongs with a designer and with the City.
Downstairs Living is a drafting desk notebook kept by Priya Nair in Calgary. A drafting desk notebook from Calgary. Nothing on this site is sponsored.
Layout ideas here are ideas, not drawings for construction. Anything structural belongs with a designer and the City.