Bedroom Plans

The living room cabinetry is installed, but I won't be adding new photos till after I prime and paint. And before that, I have to mud and sand. So, while the first round of topping compoound is drying, I'm going to do some more work on a quilt I started, oh, about a decade and a half ago.


This quilt is a goal of long standing. When I was in my late teens, we visited a craft fair in West VIrginia, where I saw my first log cabin quilt ever. I fell in love with the combination of folksy tradition and geometric sophistication. Ever since then, I've wanted one for my own bed. Finally, I'm close! I still need to sew the seam down the center, and add a row on each end. Then comes the quilting process itself. It'll take a while, but it's something to look forward to.

At this point, I'm wondering what color to paint the bedroom where this quilt is going. It needs to be a dark color, to mitigate the early-early morning and late-late night sunshine we get at this northern latitude. It needs to be a cool color, since the bedroom retains a lot of heat in the summer. The furniture in that room is on the darker side (walnut tones), and our accessories have a lot of metal tones (silver and copper). I'm thinking of color-washed shades of dark blue, but I'm open to other suggestions. What would you use? Comments are welcome!

Designed to Stay

Have you ever watched Designed to Sell on HGTV and expected the homeowners to say at the end of the show, "Wait, I've changed my mind! This place looks so good now, I'm not moving out after all." That's usually my reaction. With that in mind, I've been reading the book based on the TV show. I want some ideas for making our small rooms seem as spacious as possible. A lot of the advice is just what you'd expect: remove the clutter; focus attention on the room's best features; repaint; for a color scheme, think neutral, neutral, neutral. Since we're going to live here for the foreseeable future, we don't have to be quite so conservative with the decor. But I'm definitely aboard with the no-clutter theme.

The author says, "Buyers love built-ins." Well, I love them too. They add charm and function to a room. That's why we're building them. However, the process is painfully slow. Add to that the fact that older houses like ours have no true right angles, meaning that no matter how hard we work to get the built-ins level where they should be level, and parallel where they should be parallel, they end up looking slightly uneven from one vantage point or another. I think the built-ins for this house will end with the living room. For the rest of the house, I'll buy furniture instead. If a future buyer expresses a wish for more built-ins, I'll tell them to nail the furniture to the wall and call it good.

Since work on said built-ins is proceeding at a snail's pace, there are no updated pictures to add right now.
However, just to keep things interesting, here are a couple of pictures of a bedroom we converted into a library/office. It's the only room in the entire house that's all the way finished, although these pictures were taken before all the furniture got moved in.

First, we re-insulated, put up new drywall, and replaced two small, square, high windows with a single large egress window to meet local safety codes. To decorate, we went for a simple, clean, modern look, inspired by the mahogany bookshelves my husband made many years ago. The books and knickknacks provide color and pattern enough, so I chose a neutral beige ("Gobi Desert" by Behr) for the walls.

The beige-on-beige carpet has just enough pattern to give it a bit of life, but not enough to compete with the bookshelves. We liked the look of crown molding, but we didn't want to overwhelm such a small room, so we chose the smallest molding we could find to stay in scale. The molding, doors, ceiling, and other trim were painted with Behr "Swiss Coffee," a beautifully clear white with just a hint of ivory. For the final touch, we sanded and refinished the hardwood floors. I love the way it all turned out, lively and interesting, but restful and relaxed, too.

It's nice to have one good room to retreat to when the rest of the renovations get too crazy. Or too slow.

Mudding Tight Corners

We have 3/4" aluminum channels to hold the rope lights inside our cabinets. We should have cut these off flush with the floor of the cabinet, but for some reason,the floor got cut out to fit around the aluminum channels instead. This leaves a gap, a "black hole" I don't want stuff falling into. I needed a very narrow offset spatula to mud the hole in, so my talented carpenter/subcontractor/tool-and-die-maker/spouse created this one for me.




Here you can see, top to bottom: 1) the gap left by the aluminum channel, 2) using the tool to pack in and level off the mud, and 3) the finished result (before sanding).

We're sort of designing things as we go along, which is not the best way of doing it. I think if I had it to do over, the rope lights and aluminum channels would only have come as far down as the open display shelves. I don't even remember why we chose to have them extend into the storage below, unless maybe it was to make it easier to rummage about in the storage section to find things.

Anyway, I've abandoned the idea of adding similar built-ins to the rest of the house. It's too time-consuming. I've lived long enough in a construction zone, and now, I just want it finished!

Construction Details: Arches

This is how we're building the arches. I'm not saying it's the only way to do it, or even the best way, but it works for us.

First, the space was framed in with 2x4's. Then we added the interior walls (back & sides) and the side wall on the exterior. Next, to the front of the structure, we fastened a sheet of wood with an arch cut out. This sheet of wood isn't visible from the outside, but you can see it in this photo taken from inside the cabinet:


You can also see that we added rope lights, which are set into a 3/4" aluminum channel.

The picture below is taken from the outside of the arch. To bridge the gap between the sheet of wood and the drywall, we used 1/2" MDF (fastened with finishing nails) on the uprights, and 1/4" masonite (attached with brads) bent to fit the arch. The masonite overlaps the MDF with a 2" lap joint. I mudded the joint as well as the edge between the masonite and the drywall, bringing the mud all the way to the edges of the masonite on the arch. After I prime and paint, we'll add trim around the opening.


This picture below has nothing to do with building anything. We had nearly a foot of snow Sunday. Monday was sunny and beautiful. I wanted to share this picture of our yard in the snow and sunshine.

Inspiration

This fabric is the inspiration for my color scheme. It has the warm gold, rust, and green that I love, plus cool eggplant and gray-blue for contrast and depth. I'm hoping there's enough of the fabric for window toppers. I bought the whole bolt, but that was only about three yards at 60" wide. Even if there were enough for full-length drapes, I'd probably stick with blinds and window toppers. Too much fabric would make this small room feel even smaller.



The window toppers will look like this, if I have enough fabric. The scallops should look nice with the arches.

The walls are butter-yellow with a subtle medium-gold color wash. To give the built-ins a feeling of depth, I used the medium gold for my base color, with a deep gold color wash. All washes were prepared 1 part paint, 1 part glaze, and 1 part water. They were applied with a sea sponge and smoothed with a blending brush. The brush was pricey but worth it, because its super-soft bristles are perfect for blurring the color wash without leaving brush strokes.

Having heard that color washes need a coat of varnish to protect them, I started applying a Valspar satin varnish. The satin turned out a lot glossier than expected, which causes just enough glare to obscure the color wash. Hopefully, there's something available that's a little more matte. Shiny walls were not the effect I was going for.

Work in Progress: Living Room Cabinets

Last summer, I decided the time had come to finish the living room. Or perhaps I should say, to start the living room. I don't have any good "before" pictures, but this will give you an idea. When this was taken, we had replaced the window on the side, but not the three on the front. Even the new window wasn't completely framed in, and it didn't have a window sill. You can see some damage on the right wall. When we bought the house, the damage was cleverly hidden behind the ugliest dark-dark brown panelling you'd ever want to see. Picture the remaining walls and ceiling in dingy white, with no overhead lighting, and you've got the idea.


It also turns out that there was virtually no insulation. The military contractor had used the loose, fluffy variety, which had long since settled to a depth of about 2' above floor level. The remaining space was devoid of any insulation whatsoever. We ripped out drywall, re-insulated to code, and replaced the drywall shortly after we moved in. We even framed in some cabinetry in the corners. However, work eventually ceased, the drywall remained unmudded, and the cabinets were just bare bones. Last summer, I decided enough was enough. Or not enough, as the case may be.

In the photo below, you can see that the cabinetry in the two corners is just barely framed in. The plan is to have open shelving above, and storage cabinets with doors below. I went ahead and painted the back walls of the cabinets because I was impatient to see what my chosen colors would look like. I didn't expect it to come out so mustardy. I wasn't sure I liked the effect. The family thought I'd lost my mind when they saw those colors. But I'm trusting my plan.


Did I mention that I don't work very neatly?

We finished the ceiling and installed overhead lighting. The ceiling was a challenge--it had begun to sag because the drywall was attached with nails instead of screws. After we screwed it back in, it caused the old nails to protrude slightly, so they had to be pounded back down. In all, we were left with at least 300 nail & screw holes to patch and sand. Sanding overhead is an odious job! The angle feels awkard for your arm and shoulder, plus the dust settles on your goggles to the point you can't see what you're doing. Priming and painting were a real bear, too. But what a difference! I'd thought of the old ceiling as "dirty white", but when I started putting the primer on, the old paint actually looked tan by comparison. What a relief to finish that part of the project.

This fall, we finally framed in the arches for the open shelving. Now I'm mudding that section of the room, and that's where it stands.


Here's a chair I found for $10 at a thrift shop. It needs a bit of refinishing, but hey, a bargain is a bargain. I love the carving. It'll fit in well with the semi-Old World theme I'm planning.

Introduction

For longer than I care to say, we've been in the process of converting an old military duplex into a single-family home, while said family has actually been living in the house. At the time, it seemed like a good idea (well, to one of us anyway; the other one had her doubts). But here we are. When people ask us how the work is coming along, I'll just refer them here.