Destruction Introduction

We had fallen in love with an old house. And then we fell into the trap that so many homeowners do. We painted, renovated, updated, redid and revamped every room in our house- save for one...our bedroom. We just ran out of steam, and time (babies!) and money.... Now I have mentioned something before about "this old house", its smallish. We have two bedrooms. Both of which are occupied. So New Blue is going to be bunking with me and Jamie, lets say- for a while- until we can put an addition onto our "little house of dreams". Our house, being as old as it is, is (was) mostly internally clad in plaster. We left the best for last? The plaster walls were starting to buckle and crack with age...not the best condition for us, let alone a new baby. So here we go (with 6 weeks to go) project number 1 I'm sharing with you- the bedroom.

This was the one room in the house when we bought it (in 2003) that I remember saying "oh no" about. It was hideous. The previous owners had painted the room terracotta orange. Not aged
terracotta mind you- I mean freshly bought from Home Depot- picked off the stack of 1000 other pots equally as orange terracotta. The trim (which was in desperate need of replacing...not just painting) was painted baby butt pink. I joke you not. There was a monstrous stained glass ceiling fan-which matched the terracotta orange on the walls to the tee. And greyish carpeting- or what was once carpeting and now looked more like matting on the floor to round out the whole look. I gave the room a quick once over- threw up in my mouth a little and quickly shut the door- (also painted that fleshy pink color.)

Rose colored glasses were we wearing indeed. I slapped up some blue paint I had left over from a previous apartment and used a tinted glazing to hide the fact that the plaster wasn't up to snuff even then. I left the trim- I figured then that that room would be soon redone, so why bother? (Yes, look closely...that is still painters tape around the molding...I told you, we moved on to other things after we could tolerate the shade of the bedroom and really never looked back, or took the 5 minutes to take the tape down...sigh.) Fast forward to now.

Now is the time we were able to really put the effort into our room and it is being gutted. The boys and I were evicted for the weekend- and are leaving again tonight so Jamie can continue the demolition.


Blech. Talk about a mess.


This is what our room looks like now. Pretty, isn't it? We tore (and when I say we here, I mean Jamie) down the three closets that were in the room which were awkward and not terribly serviceable. They will be replaced by a large built in custom cabinet/closet that will run along one wall- opening up the whole room.



Somewhere, under there- are our pretty hardwood floors. (The afore mentioned carpet was ripped out of the whole second floor, and the floors were reclaimed before I would even step foot into the house.)

Jamie just started the ceiling. We are going to raise it a few feet into the attic just to give the room a little more space.


Big job? Oh yes. Time crunch? You bet. I'll show you what is going into the new space, or at least what I've been dreaming of these past 8 years (including a new mini nursery- yikes!) later this week...until then though, think of me and my completely displaced everything...closet is the dining room table- dresser and bed shoved into office- boys room completely taken over by the most random things- wedding dress- Halloween costumes-shoes-tights-ties- old baby clothes- new baby clothes...you name it. Luckily, I can still reach the keyboard...mostly...barely.