As any of our real-life friends know, this house has a great bonus room but had a major flaw when we moved in. The previous owners had owned at least one pet, and in their domestic issues, this poor neglected pet had taken to the bonus room upstairs for its reprieve... and personal bathroom.
Yuck! the stain, the damage to the base-board... and there were stains up the drywall.
Our inspector at purchase-time assured us that it was dry (no moisture damage! Yay!) even though his tester detected moisture, which he said is a common effect of animal urine. So we cleaned and sanded it all, thoroughly to remove the damage.
We also cut out and removed the carpet and padding in that corner within 24 hours of closing on the house to rid the room of the stink-source!
After some stain-blocking primer and paint over the stained sub-floor and baseboards, all was ready for painting with no evidence of previous damage!
Also, notice that the room picture above has a light with a ceiling fan near the window, and the other end of the room has a 4-bulb halogen light...in different finishes! The bulbs were burned out on the halogen light, so we moved it down to the laundry room and got new bulbs to light up that workspace. We hope to re-use the fan in our master bedroom (the oil rubbed bronze is nicer than the chippy brass light/fan we have in there now), but we have to find a new light kid for it as this one has no bulb-cover (nor does the existing master light/fan... Our CFL bulbs nearly blind me in bed when they're on and exposed!)
The doors are as follows:
The left door is access to our walk-in attic space (over the kitchen) and furnace area.
The middle door (the jut-out) is a large closet upstairs...not a 1/2 bath that the city records indicate!
And on the right, the small door accesses more storage that is about 16 inches deep (from the wall out to the exterior siding and studs) and the length of the room...that is where we store our stock pile of "Stuff to Put Out for Yard Sale!"
We also have a pull-down attic with access from the downstairs hall, but it has no flooring. We may add some flooring just to advertise at selling time and showcase all the storage this house has (in spite of what the tiny coat and linen closet downstairs lead you to believe!)
Other than replacing the (non-working) lights with some $14.99 IKEA halogen MATCHING light fixtures, we had lived with it like this for a year: unpainted, missing carpet patch, and just collecting boxes we had yet to unpack around Hubby's desk space. Oh, and with this original light in the stairwell that always felt like it was sticking out three times further than it was -- I swear I dodged my head out of its way every time I went up and down the stairs even though I could SEE that it wasn't in my way. It just felt like it was.
Ok, I'll also admit that we painted some test swatches in both the stairwell and the room upstairs to see what we thought about colors...but those swatches remained undecided and untouched for at least the last 10 months.
With Baby #2 well on the way, we knew it was time to splurge on the new carpeting and paint the room so that our guests could sleep upstairs now and we could prep the nursery downstairs for the baby, where the guests used to sleep.
After some pricing kerfuffles with Lowes (seriously got an actual quote 2x the estimated quote... including charges for things they said were "flat rates" originally), we went with an in-stock berber loop carpet from Home Depot. At $0.88ish per square foot plus the $0.49/sq ft carpet pad, we got the room, closet, and 13 steps recarpeted for less than $1000!
The paint was leftover from the rest of the house: the stairs are painted Olympic's Quill (same as the Living Room, Dining Room, Entry, and Hallway downstairs), and the bonus room area at the top is Olympic's Misty Lake (Hubby's and my FAVORITE color in the house!) leftover from our master bedroom.
Pardon the baby equipment -- no I don't spend much time up here with the kids (only while Big Brother is sleeping), but we are starting to host our weekly Community Group gathering of church friends, and the kids have to have a place to do their activities and lessons apart from the adults who meet downstairs. Since the kids range in age from 4 months to 13 years, we pulled out the swing and jumperoo a little before Baby 2 will need them downstairs.
For Christmas, Hubby got me a stack of wood and some baskets I picked out from World Market that he is going to use to build me a knock-off of Pottery Barn's Small Bedford Desk set like this:
My desk will actually have deeper cubbies than the PB original, but I like the simple lines and the fact that I can choose for the cubbies and legs to switch around, depending on whether I want storage on the left or right whenever we rearrange things on a whim.
Oh, and we also switched out the stairwell light for a much lower-profile up-light that helps brighten the stairs much better!
We also painted the banister supports a brushed metallic stainless steel/nickel spray paint while it was down for wall-painting. All the knobs and hinges throughout the house will get similar make-overs eventually, but we took care of this without having to take the banister off again later just for that purpose.
The curtains we hung are one of 2 pair my Grandmother sewed for us for our first apartment when we were newlyweds. Instead of hanging them on a concealed rod, I used rings and clips to hang them from a rod I got on clearance at Lowes for $5 with beautiful mercury glass finials on each end! (PS: though it is dark, don't Hubby and I look smart with all our diplomas? Technically, we have 2 each, but he put his Phi Beta Kappa certificate with his BS and PhD certificates.... la dee dah, right? Just kidding! He's seriously a genius!)
So that's our bonus room. In spite of it's lack of direct sunlight (or much natural light at all with one window in a 20+ foot room!), it isn't well insulated and can get quite cold or warm up here. But with a light down comforter, it is plenty warm in the winter, and we have a rotating tower fan for the warm summer days.
We would love to put at least a 1/2 bath in up here for guests (who now have to go downstairs and share the kids' bathroom at the end of the hallway), but that just isn't in the cards for the short time we plan to own this house...though we should get a call into the city to fix the tax records about that, probably. It isn't even rough-plumbed up here, so I don't know where they got the notion that there was a half-bath up here!
Do you have a bonus room? How do you use the space? As an office, guest room, game room, TV room...? My mom loves bonus rooms...good thing since this is her home-away-from-home when she makes her monthly or bi-monthly babysitting visits, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment