You know those home improvement blogs where they make it all look so clean and fast and easy? Well clearly this is not one of those blogs. I’m obviously trying to scare you off from home improvement 🙂 So, we left off with walls painted and a prisony looking chimney. Well since then I had another full Saturday of slaving away on the bedroom–

I raked the yard for about an hour. Have at least a dozen to go. It was gloriously warm and felt SOOOOO good to be outside!!  Then my dad dropped by to help. He kept saying casually “Yeah, we’ll just cut up the floor and check it out.”  Right. Things I am not comfortable doing: cutting up the floor. I had already measured and marked where I wanted a ceiling fan in the living room and we knew we wanted to run ducting up next to the existing chimney. So my dad came and I let him do the honors of actually cutting into the floor. For the ceiling fan, wiring was going to be the challenge. So he cut where I’d marked and lo and behold: wiring for a light already there! Apparently they’d just patched over the ceiling!! Incredible. When does anything come easier than you thought? Almost never. Then he cut the floor for the new vent stack (not an immediate project but one we wanted to figure out before putting in new flooring). It will work just fine and I could put the new flooring in right up to the newly cut vent stack space. With that, the amazing KC went on his way to work on another project and I went to Lowes for a ceiling fan box.

I spent the next while installing a new ceiling fan box with supports, knocking out the patch in the ceiling below to install the box, making a drywall-dusty mess in the living room and then of course, the easy fan box kit was actually made for a house that didn’t have two layers of ceiling so the screws that came with it didn’t work. Sigh. Really? Another trip to Lowes? I decided to make the best of it and showered and dressed for Mass, stopping at Lowes on my way. Booyah. Look at me combining trips and walking into Lowes looking like a normal person. There’s got to be a first time for everything I suppose.

After Mass I finished installing the ceiling fan box, patched the floor after installing the box, pulled a lot of staples and tiny nails out of the floor to prep for the new flooring, swept, cut and put down the underlayment, and… started installing my new floor. Naturally it was 8 pm by the time I laid my first piece of floor – nothing like starting a rather intense project fresh, right? As usual, I was motivated by crazy (and a late afternoon cup of coffee) so I got almost the entire floor laid. This one went smoother than the last few and I had gotten all but the last row that needed table saw cuts (my table saw is at my brother’s house) by shortly after midnight. Not bad at all.

Sunday I pulled nails out of trim while watching an HGTV show in my PJs. I baked rolls and bread. And I went to my parents’ for our annual seder meal, a week early because my brother was in town. And of course there were cute babies to snuggle. (You know I was just looking for an excuse to post pictures of the cute babies, right? Who needs home improvement pictures when there are BABIES?!?!?)

After the Sedar dinner on Sunday, my dad made the two cuts on the table saw so I could finish the floor. Monday night I reinstalled some of the trim and put two coats of paint on the chimney. Then a friend was coming to visit and graciously held bunk bed pieces while I screwed them in. We didn’t finish, but the hard parts were done and I could finish solo (once I got the right tool). Excellent.

Wednesday night I finished putting the bed together, hefted mattresses into place, modified an old curtain to fit this window, made up the beds with clean linens, and basically put it together. I still need to finish the trim (reinstalling, modifying with existing trim and putting a few new pieces in) and then caulk and paint it. And caulk the attic perimeter and some wonky ceiling tile cracks (clearly whoever installed this ceiling was much better at the half ass game than I am). And in the meantime, I’m thrilled with how the room is looking. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, but it is looking awesome. And my cousin planning to sleep over a few days / nights  this weekend and I’m thrilled to have a functional and even pretty room to offer her.

I made those two rows of hooks out of a 1×4, some paint, and and a few hooks. And those lovely vintage crates in the corner are just sitting on top of the hole in the floor we made for future vents. Everything else in the room I already had: bedding, toys, beds, kitchen set made by my dad when I was tiny, desk, etc. I did go out on a limb and buy a space heater specifically for this room and of course the flooring and paint supplies, but overall a pretty low budget renovation. And yeah, things will continue to improve but for now I’m happy and relieved to have come this far. And yes! Come stay anytime, there’s a room for you!