Moving On In! To the New Office!

   We are SO pumped to start moving into our new office and studio space! It will be SO nice to have an official place to deal with mail and bills, computers, printer, scanner, and all of Kevin's gadgets. Books shall be stashed and papers shall be filed + finally a full-time space for the sewing machine, book binding materials, and all of those other crafty supplies!

- Finished painting: "Buttered Sweet Corn" is a sunny yellow perfect to brighten up the long wall in the new office and "Fossil," a warm gray for the rest.

- We grouted the tile (again...) + Kevin stained, cut and installed base trim
    Remember back in June we shared how the tile looked grouted? (See Post) Well, shortly thereafter we decided that we didn't like it.... at all.
Here's what it was:

This pic is blurry, but you can see that we tried what was *supposed to be a warm gray grout - it REALLY got red and in the office with lots of natural light, it really took on a pink cast. Boo.

Here's it is now:

We decided to go with a dark charcoal grout instead - and we LOVE the way it turned out :)

Here you can see the tile with the trim with paint - voila!

- Hung window blinds

- We've moved in the tall bookshelf + Kevin's desk and Kevin has begun setting up our modem, signal repeater and printer just so...

Kevin gets the backyard view...

- I've begun to move in a few things to "my side" of the office too. This sunny yellow wall shall be home to my tall work table, sewing table, this new IKEA tall white book shelf and mounted wall shelves galore

Still to come:
- Ummm... more furniture of course...
- wall mounted shelves
- LOTS of stuff: supplies, artwork, computers, items collected over the years, etc.
- Floor Rug
- A place for Finch to hang out
- Plants - I think we need plants in here...
- New desk chair for Kevin
- Pillows in the window seat? Something comfy...

We will be back *soon with a grand reveal!! Can't wait to show you how the office turns out!

Downstairs Progress Report #3

Let there be floors!
   We've added heated floor coils under a portion of the new tile in the office for us to use in the winter. There is a heat vent in the room, but adding the heated floors will help warm the room and ensure that we will want to use the space year round :)

   Tile in the office, mud room and backdoor entry area has been laid and grouted - finally! - with a little line of tiny slate tiles to "separate" the spaces - just wanted to add it in for fun since we decided to use the same large tile in both rooms.

   We've begun getting the bedroom closet ready for, well, stuff. Our friend, Brian, is moving into the downstairs bedroom this weekend, and he is *probably going to need a place to hang his clothes. We purchased a 4-wire basket 'drawer' organizer from IKEA for the base of the new closet cubby space. 2 or 3 shelves will fill the space above. At one of several Menard's trips last weekend, we picked up a super tall closet shelving unit - the kind that can be incorporated with all sorts of other closet storage tidbits - we  attached a few closet rods + mounting a large mirror on the wall! (a mirror that was on the wall at the top of the stairs upstairs when we moved in...)
   We painted Brian's Room and closet (one coat of paint in the closet) "Silver Sage" - a lovely blue/gray color I swiped from Restoration Hardware. We had it matched at Home Depot of course :)

Up next =
- door frames + doors (that reminds me....we need to buy door knob hardware still....)
- base trim (Kevin stained and poly'ed all the trim + doors/frames already - currently taking up the entire garage - now it just needs to measured, cut down and installed..._
- new blinds for the office and bedroom - all added up = we need 8 sets of blinds (the 3 windows per bay window really add up fast)

Downstairs Progress Report #2

We're still making progress downstairs!
  - Drywall is up!
  - prepping floors for tile
  - ready to repair the ceiling from all of the new wiring...

2 views of our new office with a snoopy onlooker lurking in the soon-to-be mud room

On the left: Because this spaced used to be a garage, there was a pretty drastic slope on the concrete floor - a gradual 2" decline that would have Kevin's office chair rolling away with him on it! So we've poured a self leveling floor to make up most of the difference - the rest can be made up when tiling.
On the right: in order to get the new lighting all wired in, we had to take a few sections out of the ceiling - but we plan to patch them right back in and respray. A lot of people get upset about popcorn ceiling, but whatev - we don't mind.

On the left: we've added a little inset cubby in the office to sit a bookshelf into.
On the right: our new hallway closet is coming together.

Finch the Foreman is inspecting the work. So far so good.

Next steps =
  - adding the heating coil element and thermostat to heat the office floor
  - start laying tile
  - get the dry wall taped and mudded
  - respray the ceiling

More to come!

Downstairs Progress Report

We've been back at it again this past weekend! Here's the progress report! 

   - carpet gone

   - walls framed up

   - wall of cabinets removed

   - starting on wiring

   - planning for recess can lights

this is where the whole wall of cabinets lived previously...

our new little hallway closet...

What a mess! So glamorous isn't it?
More to come!

Let's Head Downstairs!

  Our basement is divided into two sides:
     - Head down the stairs, turn to the right = our family room + laundry room area - in progress.Future home of movie watching and video game playing...
     - Turn left at the bottom of the stairs to go out the back door, pass the downstairs full bathroom, and head into the ??? room.
  This room used to be a 2-car tuck-under garage many, many years ago before the previous homeowners built an extra large detached garage space. The tuck-under space was finished off into a HUGE room with a HUGE closet, two big bay windows, a wall of cabinets, and a teeny-tiny sink. The previous owners used this space for a master bedroom, + office space + what seems to be a lot of ??? space.
  When WE first walked through this house a year ago, we didn't know what the heck was going on with this room, and ended up purchasing the house with plans to divide the room up into smaller, more functional spaces....
  Take a look...

Here are a few views of the room
Please Note:  Lovely load-bearing post right in the center of the room + the super attractive brass reading lamps that used to flank the previous owners king sized bed.
(They took the mailbox with them, but left us these treasures...)

Upper left =  cabinets with a little countertop area complete with little 8"x8" sink
(Note: the bathroom is right on the other side of this wall - not TOO far to go to brush your teeth...)
The other photos show the extra large walk-in closet full of the press board shelving the old owners built themselves... The closet space is SO large, that most of the space in here is pretty much wasted.
Unless we add center island to maximize the space, this space is pretty much just a big dressing room.
While that sounds very glamorous, we just don't think it's necessary...

Two big bay windows look out onto our driveway.
A perfect place for a certain someone to keep an eye on who is coming and going...

 
  FAST FORWARD to today! We are moving forward with remodeling this big ole' room! I have moved all of the unpacked boxes that used to live over here into the other side of the basement, and we're ready to start some demo!
 
BEFORE:

THE PLAN:

We plan to keep a portion of the space as our 4th bedroom, but we still have plenty of space to spare for a shared office/studio space, and a mud room. We are taking part of the huge closet, + adding a smaller hall closet space. On the wall where all of those old cabinets used to live, we'd like to install new lower cabinets and countertop that will include a designated home for Finch's kennel.  ( Like my diagrams?!)

So let the demo begin! That closet wall has got to go!

Nice work Kevin!

Closet walls are gone! Time to frame it all up! as our pal Brian looks on... he likes to "help"...

More to come soon!!