Last week I shared with you that my husband and I are renovating our master bedroom. In my very first post HERE I talked about our plans and the look for the room we wanted. This week is all about the demolition phase and the little surprises we uncovered.
When we first bought our house way back in 1998 the previous owners added a large his & hers closet because the built in closet that came with the house is very small. Even though it was a great idea to build such a nice spacious closet into the room, it took up a lot of space. The closet only left two ways to position the bed: on an angle as seen in the photograph on my first post, or against the wall opposite the closet which leaves you about a foot and a half of walking space between the end of the bed and the closet. Neither option was ideal, so we always planned to remove the closet once the kids moved out of the house because we would no longer need the closet space.
Other than aesthetic reasons, the closet needed to be torn down because it was simply falling apart. The doors never stayed closed, the shelf was falling off the wall and needed to be braced up, and my sweet little Jackson discovered how fun shredding wallpaper off the closet was and destroyed it.
So we took the closet down and discovered a huge surprise: a damaged wall and floor, and water damage in the ceiling.
The odd shaped corner is the chimney. Nails couldn't go through the cement so the previous owners glued the plywood to the chimney. The huge hole in the ground is where the old heating vent was.
Because the previous owners weren't the brightest chips off the block, they destroyed the ceiling trying to find a stud to nail the top of the closet into.
The original baseboards were also removed, so now we had to replace those too.
But perhaps the worst thing of all was finding the water damage in the ceiling. The only way to repair this was to completely tear the entire ceiling apart and re-do it. We did not want to do that (I should note, that there is not a leak anymore. This is just damage from a old leak). The ceiling is so fragile that if you just touch it, it starts to fall down on top of you. So, change of plans and back to the drawing board! We decided to come up with a different design for the room.
The cubbies in the book shelf were sized to perfectly fit one large basket. I will store items like socks, scarves, flip flops, etc. in these baskets.
Here's what the ceiling looks like with the bookshelf now in place before all the molding is added.
Once the walls were covered with the faux brick paneling and the bookshelf was complete, the crown and other decorative moldings could be added. There's only a hint of water damage showing now, which will be covered up by spackle and ceiling texture.
Once the wall was done, it was time to work on the floor. It had a lot of problems. The previous owners had cut holes in the floor to access the living room ceiling below. This created instability in the floor. Many times I walked on the floor and it felt as if my foot would go right through. So, we needed a new floor! We picked out a grey laminate flooring which I will show next week.
In the meantime, my husband laid down some lauan plywood to provide more stability and even out the old floor.
Once the Lauan was laid, it was my turn to get busy. I textured the ceiling and painted all the walls and trim. I was covered in paint for three days! So if you have not seen much of me on social media, that is why. The ceiling turned out great, and I'm thrilled with the paint color we chose. I can't wait to show you the miraculous transformation next week!
Till then, Have a Great Day! Amy
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