Trapped in a Corner

Our latest project has been working on the so-called 'office room'. At least, it used to be my office room until we started working on it; now it's just a mess. Our goal is to make it a combination office/guest room, with a pull down Murphy bed to save space, but it's a time-consuming project. (Not as much as the upstairs bathroom, but still...)

Originally, it had two walls covered with (cigarette smoke-filled) cork tiles and red carpet squares, with a small built-in desk in one corner, and a tiny, badly framed closet with a plastic folding door in another. All that's been ripped out now, but here are a few of the 'before' photos:

Stinky smoke-infested cork tiles.

Yes, very small.

Because red carpet squares are a GOOD idea?

As I've mentioned in another post, we pulled up the carpet throughout the house when we moved in. Like most of the upstairs flooring, most of this wood floor was in pretty good shape, so it hasn't been refinished yet. Aside from that, I scraped all the carpet and cork tiles off the wall, though a lot of the glue is still present - and a real pain to get off.

We will probably just skim coat all the walls, which is not too bad. The real pain is in the old closet corner. The wood stove pipe comes up through the floor in that corner, so we couldn't just take it all out. Instead, we had to knock out the closet part of the frame and keep the rest of it. Of course, when I say we, I really mean Liz and her father Steve. They took care of the framing one day during the week while I had a restful day at work...

Steve 'enjoying' some demolition.

You can see the wood stove pipe in the corner.

Today, Steve and I put up the drywall, which went fairly quickly, despite the slight slope in the floor and the angled ceiling.

See the white baseboard? Ugh.

I ran out of drywall 'mud', so I still have to finish covering the seams and corners, but it's still a great start! Also, as you can see from the two photos just above, I also scraped off the white 'popcorn' texture from the angled ceiling to reveal the old orange-y color. I don't know that I have the energy to scrape down the whole ceiling instead of skim coating it. We'll have to see about that...

The only unfortunate thing about removing the closet is that now this room doesn't have one. Fortunately, that's why armoires exist.

My next big plan for this room is to finish this corner, scrape/dissolve the glue walls some more, and strip/restain that white baseboard to match as closely as I can. We're also talking about making a bookcase to fit around this corner, which could be cool. It would certainly be useful considering how many books we have!

That's it for now, but I'll post more soon now that we have a new project in motion!