Renovation on the house started this Tuesday, and R is already making an incredible amount of progress. As a quick recap, I am having two small bedrooms on the first floor of my house combined into one larger bedroom that will have a closet that is larger than a refrigerator.
The first couple of days, the dust was HORRIBLE, what with a lot of plaster being knocked down. Fortunately, things have progressed to where the work area can actually be sealed off, so I am no longer thinking of relocating to my mom's place.
Oddly enough, the cat seems to be happy as a clam at high tide. The furniture that has been moved out of those rooms has given him all sorts of new perches, and he loves the contractors. Apparently, he sneaks into the room where they are working and 'supervises.' The noise and so on doesn't bother him, but given that the cat is more curious about the vacuum than frightened by it, it's not too big of a surprise.
Now, on to the pictures:
The closet will go along that back wall. The window you see there will be closed off, which is no big deal as it is a) northern exposure and b) looks out onto a neigbor who lights their deck with what I think must be kleig lights. The new wood you see along the left hand side of the picture and in the gap in the ceiling (between the older, darker joists) is a new load-bearing beam and strut to take the place of what used to be a load-bearing wall containing the world's smallest closets. The big gray beam off to the left is actually a duct that runs to the upstairs. That will be re-routed into the wall and along the ceiling. The head of my bed will go between those two windows, disguising the fact that the two windows are different heights. No one in the neighborhood (everyone has nearly identical interior layouts) knows why the builders did this.
The tarps cover what used to be the bedroom door and the door into what used to be my cleaning supply closet. New location for cleaning supplies/assorted kitchen stuff will be addressed in Phase 2 of the remodel project. On the floor, new wood will be interleaved to fill in the gaps left by the ex-walls/ductwork, and then the floor will need to be refinished. The door with the two vertical thingies on it will be replaced (as will every one of its clones) with traditional six-panel colonial style doors. If you go out that door and turn right, that takes you to my living room and its purty blue walls. One nice thing about the new door configuration is that there will no longer be a direct view from my living room into my bedroom if I leave my bedroom door open.
Last pic is a view of the wall opposite the closet, which has southern exposure. The black thingie between the windows is a little cabinet/mirror. It will probably stay there, or close enough. Chair/ottoman and reading lamp go in the left-hand corner, small dresser between the windows, and my desk in the right-hand corner. I'll be using the same gold-green paint that's in that portion of the room to do the whole bedroom. Yes, part of me will miss the blue and white stripes, but that green looks lucious both in sunlight and on overcast days.
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