State Of The Bedroom Address

Well, it's been a solid two months since we started demo on the third bedroom project and nearly a month since my last post.  We've been very busy at work (I won't bore you with the details) and we're also experiencing the appallingly early beginning of the rainy season.  Our old sofa is now sitting squarely on the third bedroom's still-unfinished floor along with a chair I scored when my friend M moved cross-country (more on both of those later).  All of these things sort of combined to mean I have absolutely zero acceptable photos of the now-painted walls and ceiling in the bedroom.  Either we're too busy or it's too dark out or I'm too embarrassed by our lack of progress to photograph it.  But today I'm sucking it up, so get ready for the first (crappy) photos of the paint job.  And I have to say, I'm very proud of my drywall.  To badly paraphrase classic horror villain Jame Gumb, I'd hire me.  

First, let's go back to the beginning of this project just to remind ourselves of how it used to feel in this room.  I present this photo without comment:

Now, if you'll pardon the dark photos, a bit of before and after...

Northwest corner then:

Northwest corner now:

 
North wall then:

 North wall now:

 Ceiling then:

 Ceiling now:

 So in case you're wondering, yes, I totally painted it almost-white.  It's actually the same color as the living room (Behr's Irish Mist), and once we get some nice glossy white trim going on in there, it should look a bit more like the pale gray it actually is; here's an old shot of the wall color / trim color contrast in the entryway.  Hi y'all!

The only reason the ceiling color and wall color appear so identical in the above photos of the bedroom is that it's dark in there right now.  The Pacific Northwest is tough for interior photography, and/or I have no idea how to artificially light a space before photographing it. 

So what's left to do?  A lot.  

First, flooring.  We're hoping to tackle that soon, but we need to get the old sofa out of there.  I've found a buyer who wants to come get it next weekend.  

[So, yeah, side note: after a couple of days of sitting on the new couch, we noticed that the giant gap in the cushions magically closed up-- the manufacturer assured me it would happen, and it did-- and the down has relaxed quite a bit, which makes the thing really comfortable.  Photos next time I clean the living room, I promise.] 

Anyway, the flooring I found was both budget-friendly-ish and a really close match to the hardwood in the rest of the house; like, it's close enough that I'd put it in the kitchen right next to the original flooring.  We've got the underlayment and we're ready to get started as soon as possible, but when you live in a 1350 square-foot house, there just aren't a ton of places for your old sofa to hang out.

After flooring, trim.  And that's going to be quite the project.  To make a long story short (too late), there are some big molding challenges in here, and we're going to have to get creative.  One of the many things we need to address is the pipe that feeds our outside spigot-- it sticks up through the floor and exits the house under the big window.  I'm currently leaning towards using this IKEA Besta unit to cover up the problem; I'd need two of those and one of the matching half-width ones to span the wall under the window.  They're available with pretty Shaker-style drawers; so they'd make GREAT storage if we chose to go that route; we could also go drawer-less and use the shelf space since, as two academics sharing 1350 square feet, we are under constant threat of being buried beneath a pile of books.  We'll add trim to make them look built in (there'd be a three-inch space on either side we'd have to cover with trim, no big deal) and I think they'll look nice and intentional rather than DIYed-because-of-the-spigot.

That's all for now-- tonight we're off to hear an author talk about his memoir, "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City."  Living four blocks from a major university definitely has its perks.