June 02, 2007
Some more 'Before' and 'After' shots
Since finishing the nursery we've been working on Dylans new bedroom.
What qualifies a room in a house as a bedroom in the USA is whether it has a built in closet. Although we have 6 bedrooms really, the house only currently qualifies as 4 because only 4 of the rooms have closets - this will change of course. The closet in this particular room was really not a very good one either, a badly made alcove, arched, with no door on. The pole was so absurd that you couldn't hang anything on it either because it was so close to the wall.
The room also had a dirty and revolting carpet, the obligatory nasty brown trim around the window, brown door and door trim, yellowing and unpleasant electric fixtures, and 1 inch high skirting board. On top of that it had an enormous crack in the floor thanks to the big earthquake here some years ago and it was very noticeable when you walked on it - not to mention one side of the room being lower than the other!
We had used the room as a library since moving in... full of shelves, with a futon for extra guests. When G's parents were here we cleared the room out and emptied it.
The photo doesn't really do justice to how ick it was.
Anyway - it has been our latest project because at some point in the not too distant future Dylan is going to move downstairs and it is going to become his bedroom. The babies room is downstairs and I don't want her to be alone, plus eventually I want to move all 3 of them downstairs (Harry won't go until he's properly night time potty trained). Dylan will probably move down here sometime between now & Christmas, the aim is once the baby is sleeping through the night she'll move and then so will he.
First G ripped up all of the old carpet and trim. He then had to fill the crack in the floor and level it with some cement. Following that he trimmed all the doorways and squared off the stupid archway and put a proper door on the closet. He also put trim around the window making it, I think, the nicest trimmed window in the house! Following that we painted it (D chose his own colours), then laid new carpet and put new skirting boards down. He also put new electric sockets everywhere and fitted proper poles in the closet. It looks really nice. It's not furnished yet, sis is going to be sleeping in it when she comes for the birth and obviously D's stuff is all still upstairs until he moves, but I think the photo's show the improvements!
After, the same view as the 'before' shot:
The closet
Inside the closet
Looking back the other way
