guest room & studio, part 01: getting started
11.07 - 12.07 a small project with a big start
click to see the full photo gallery[NOTE: this project was done in conjunction with the library project.]
This is a two bedroom house. Since we renovated the attic into a master suite, it officially became a three bedroom house, but it's still pretty small by modern standards. There's just the two of us and our demonic cats so it suits us just fine (and frankly, modern house sizes are completely ridiculous anyway), but those two rooms are spaces we need to make the most of.
The front bedroom first served as our master bedroom in the years before the attic project was done, while the other room served as storage of items needed immediate access to (movies, music, filing) but had no other place for. Since that time, the front bedroom became a guest room, housing my childhood bedroom set. It also contains the only closet in the entire house.
In late 2007, it had been awhile since we'd last done a project and that familiar itch of tackling something on The List was in need of scratching. We weren't ready -- emotionally or financially -- to start a major project like the bathroom or the kitchen, and it was the wrong time of year to do any planting in the yard. The two bedrooms were the obvious choice, but the first thing that needed doing was to refinish the floors in both rooms and the small hallway that links them. Which requires an unbroken stretch of time to do, something that had become an even more rare commodity at Hall House than ever before.
Sal had been in talks with OCI for months about becoming their newest Baking & Pastry instructor, so when the offer came for that position to start in January 2008, he scheduled his last day at Ladybug so that he'd have a couple of weeks between ending that job and starting the new one. Which gave us the time to tackle the floor refinishing and thus, start a new project. A few days after Christmas. In other news, Sal is a forgiving soul.
We began by clearing out those rooms. Which meant shutting the poor kitties up into half the house and piling our junk everywhere so there were just little paths through dining/living rooms. We of course kept the most important areas accessible: the kitchen, the couch, and the TV. We're seasoned professionals, after all. And on a side note, the kitties Were Not Happy With Us. I have a 4" scar on the palm of my left hand because Hobbes wanted to be sure I was fully aware of his displeasure. It's like Feline Hissy Fit Stigmata.
We swept and vacuumed, mopped and cleaned and then swept and vacuumed again. The quarter round was missing in places and damaged in others, so we took it all out to be replaced with new quarter round at a later stage. the cabinet doors in the closet had to be removed, as did all six of the doors throughout. There was also the little matter of the vinyl to be removed from the tiny hallway that connects the two rooms, but you can read about that in the library saga.