Welcome to Part 2- the 2nd story. I love the design of our house, its a cape cod with two front facing dormer windows. This means that both upstairs bedrooms have those adorable "nooks" in front. Makes me want to turn one into a nursery immediately and put a rocking chair by the window. But, practically speaking, a baby is not in the air and now that Lou is deploying for a year, come 2011, it made sense to turn one into a guest room and the other into an office for Lou's military paperwork and computer and my Ebay and Facebook operations. We also have an L shaped windowless space that fills a void behind our upstairs bathroom. We're not sure what went into the minds of the designers or builders, or why they decided to keep it window-less, but we also appropriated that space! Isn't it amazing how fast you can fill each closet, nook and spare room?
The stairs leading to the 2nd floor are carpeted, as are both bedrooms. They decided to break it up though and put linoleum in the landing at the top, leading into the same flooring in the bathroom. A bit odd, but we priced new carpet and tile and decided that it wasn't necessary for our happiness at the moment to rip out the old stuff. That's for another day......
Below was the original bath. Wallpapered and fitted out with woodtone 90s decor,
Right down to the matching toilet seat.
So the first thing was to kill all the lawyers...no, wait that's Shakespeare...or murder might be what's on your mind as you attempt to remove Elmer glue'd wallpaper from a bathroom wall. It wasn't on mine, but let's just say that I was happy when it was DONE! And told Lou we needed to eat ice cream and vegetate to celebrate!
Next Lou ripped out the cabinet, plumbing and faucet. It was a mess, but we congratulated ourselves that it still looked better than our little house on 170 Summit during construction. At least the plumbing was well run and not cast iron 40s era.
Then we started repairing drywall and sanding, which took several days. It was worth it though to finish it off with this paint-which I happen to love! The cabinet we were able to find at a surplus warehouse close by and it was a perfect addition.
This little lantern light rests over the mirror and is actually an outdoor model...stemming from my vision-announced-to-Lou about creating a nautical/lighthouse/natural shells/dozens of pictures of adorable nieces and nephews at the beach for this room. He said,"You need a lantern light-like those porch ones they sell.." and I was like,"YES! Can we?" and he must have known this was coming, as he told me to go pick one out. :) I really love the look it gives the little room.
Since this bath is probably my favorite room in the house so far, it will have the most photos devoted to it, I'm sure!
I still have to hang the pictures and buy a shower curtain and hooks but I'm so happy with how it turned out! And now Lou is a plumber as well as a painter and carpenter....
Next is the bare closet room with no windows. Most of these rooms were rental white with wood trim, so pre-photos don't do justice to the dirty walls and floors and dated lighting. I'm showing the after-work photos instead. :) This is the shelving unit that we bought at Lowes and then Lou adapted to the space and my needs.
Its the Ebay inventory storing room at the moment, but later on it will make an enormous storage closet for normal people.....hehe, not that we're strange or anything!
Again, this bedroom was white with grey carpet originally. We simply painted the ceiling and walls and installed new mini blinds. It will become an official guest room at some point, when we re-finish the full size bed we bought, but for now its an "air mattress for guests" room!
The office room is a lovely gray green color.
We decided to make it more masculine (to offset the girly periwinkle wonder) by installing a triple light. Its fun and different from
our usual sedate brushed nickel/frosted glass circular lights that we replaced all the upstairs lights with.
With all this completed, I have been itching to get a bunch of family photos developed and arranged on the stairway in true Martha Stewart fashion! I also want to rush out and find perfect this and perfect that to finish off each room....as in curtains and shades and rugs- since not a WINDOW in the entire house has curtains! But, these are all things that can wait a bit and instead we are finishing the garage and setting it up as a workshop for Lou to organize all the tools and equipment into, while keeping it large enough to park a vehicle inside. He got his Christmas present 2 months early when we started attempting to cut angles on shelf brackets (60 of them) with a circular saw and realized we would be drawing social security before the project was done, at the rate we were moving/rate of error! So off to get the saw-and here he is, totally in love with it!
So that translated into using it for the rest of the day!
And building these amazingly nice looking utility shelves! There will be 2 units, each about 8 feet long. He also plans to build a fold down table unit that he can use as a project table, but have the option of collapsing against the wall when a vehicle needs to be pulled into the garage.
And did I mention the cat? We have a cute little black and white kitty that has been coming around for the past two weeks. She probably belongs to one of our neighbors, but no one has marched over irately demanding that we "don't feed the kitty" so I continue to put out milk and scraps for her. Now she has become both lazy and friendly and sits on the back porch sunning herself and waiting for the next handout!
And I'm very glad to have made a new friend-albeit non-human one! So, with all the house re-modeling "planned and executed " I'll catch you up on regular ol' life here soon! Whoops, although there will be a post sometime soon about the Rubber Ducky Wonder Bathroom, as we are envisioning a grand project. But, between all this we have been fitting in church hunting (check) seeing friends (check) holiday plans (check) Ebay listing and selling and packaging and mailing (check) and Lou's orientation to 2-2 of the 1st Infantry, 3rd Brigade at Fort Knox! (check) Let us know if you're passing through, we'd love to see you! (and put you up in our very sparest of spare rooms)
