First, you must forgive me. I know that last week I was blogging about our laundry room, and this week I am about to share with you my plans for my secret dream room. Yet, I still haven't pulled the final laundry room reveal on you {because there isn't one}. In fact, I haven't pulled a final kid's bedroom reveal either {because there isn't one of those either}. But this blog is a true depiction of the changes we are making around the house, as we are doing them. And as much as I like to work on one space at a time until it's done, that's just absolutely not happening right now. Well, it really never does happen since rooms are always updated and tweaked and evolve as needs change, however, the mad dash to start taking advantage of the entire lower living space again really threw us for an exciting loop! And with that, comes a multitude of half or not at all finished spaces.
So in between the guys {my hubs and his dad}, putting in flooring, trim, doors and removing walls, I am still putsing away at smaller scale projects all over the abode.
But back to today's post. It's quite the lemonade from lemons type of story....
We finished our lower level in 2006, and it was a dream space for us, as it added on about 1,000 square feet of living space, which we used for a playroom, laundry room, family room, game room, bathroom, master bedroom, office and walk-in closet. It's where we spent such a huge portion of our time together and it was wonderful for entertaining as well. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. We lost our flooring, trim, doors and some furniture to massive amounts of water that entered our lower level. It really changed the way we have been living for almost the last year...
Let's chat about the series of emotions one might go through when faced with a disaster of their home. Tears, sadness, sorrow. As I watched all of our friends and family pack up our half of a home into boxes and carry it up and out, along with rolled up dripping carpet, I felt empty and sad and lost. I talked to our insurance company and they told me that we couldn't obtain any type of coverage that would protect us from the type of flood that we had, it made me feel frustrated, angry yet helpless. Then I started hearing stories about neighbors in the same situation, and even those in far worse circumstances. And I looked around me at all the friends and family that pulled together for us and became overwhelmed with gratefulness, gratitude and love. They were what mattered at the end of the day... all that we lost were just things. I still had photographs, memories and the people that I love. It could have been so much worse. We were going to be OK.
I tried to keep that attitude and find the positives as we began our life back up on our main level. We managed to squeeze our family of five plus furry friend, all back into the 1,200 square feet that we started out with. However, this was the first time we had all been on the level together, and with a daycare to boot. It was a pretty tight fit. Suddenly, we weren't really an option for entertaining since we couldn't fit large groups or families within our itty bitty living space. And we couldn't offer much of a place for guests to stay, so the number of friend/family sleepovers has been at about zero. The spot I missed most of all, was our playroom, since the toys remained downstairs for storage, yet had to be played with upstairs. And I spent many many hours trucking bins of toys up and down and down and up. I wish I had the booty to prove it....
I decided instead of feeling sad, I was going to get myself excited. Excited to make the space better than it was originally. Excited to have learned how lucky we really are to have the option to expand and use that space again. Excited to make lemonade out of those sour lemons.
I showed you last week how I jumped right at the opportunity to totally give the laundry room a facelift by painting the walls and adding some corbels to our existing shelving. Those two changes made the whole space feel SO much better. And the rest of the investment was a rug and ironing board cover. That's it. The whole room changed with just a few small updates that totaled under $100! And that is how I plan on treating the whole lower level. Yep, almost all of it is getting a fresh coat of paint. A couple of new accessories. A new layout and plan. And a lot of love.
So let's chat about this "Fairytale" space. What is it you ask?
Remember the layout of our master bedroom/office/walk-in before we flooded?
Our lower level has a pretty odd layout since the support poles went straight across the center of the basement. The majority of the space had to be divided in half. And we only have large windows on one side. I will plan on whipping up a full house layout and video tour soon, it's been on my to do list for far too long. So when it came to the Master Bedroom, we had a ton of space for our Bedroom, plus an office, plus a walk in closet.
Here is the before of our Master:
And our office nook right off of the bedroom:
Since we have a couple of desk spaces upstairs, and I plan on making the old playroom into my new Etsy Shop/Blogging studio {yep, just spilled a secret}, I no longer needed the space off of the Master Bedroom to act as an office. And for months I have laid in bed at night, brainstorming of ways we could update the lower level layout to make it function better for us. Here is what I came up with:
I thought it would be loads of fun to remove the wall dividing the old office nook and walk-in closet, to create one giant space off of the Master Bedroom. That my friends is what I am going to deem my fairytale room. My giant girly girl dressing room. A place to do my hair and put on my makeup. A place to get dressed and store our clothing. A place to exercise {since the treadmill really never fit well in our laundry room}. A place to be a girl.
It didn't take much convincing to get the hubs on board with my little plan. Taking out that wall would make for such better use of space. So that is what he and his dad did!
This is the point where the powers of the internet come in. Because I was M.I.A. being mom for most of this process. I did get to snap a few pics of them getting ready to demo however.
For anyone wanting to tear out a wall, the hubs said it is best to run a utility knife along all of the wall and ceiling corners.
That process will prevent the angle tape from tearing the adjoining walls and ceiling when the old drywall is removed.
Then, they just used a pry bar to pull the wall away from the studs.
And got their hands dirty pulling off all the drywall.
This is where I got all excited and giddy and smiled. And then I went upstairs to tend to a child or three.
We are fortunate to have my father-in-law's knowledge and help. He has been in construction for 40+ years so he has electrical and drywall experience. He took over from here. He pulled the wiring and moved the outlet for us. He patched up the walls where the studs were removed. He re-did the entire ceiling so that it looked like it had been one room since the beginning.... And HE did an AMAZING job!
Here is the room TODAY!
You would never know that it wasn't always one big room! LOVE IT!
I actually painted the walls the same color as the adjoining Master Bedroom, which is Behr's Frozen Pond. So soothing!
And here is the vision of sugar plums I have had swirling in my head:
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| {sources: mini teardrop chandelier, aspelund armoire, bloom area rug} |
I am planning on popping in two of these Ikea ASPELUND armoires flanking each side of our tall dresser. One for the Mrs. One for the Mr. I would like to limit our clothing storage to those and only those, since we have been able to live with less for the last 8 months in this closet... I know we can do it just fine.
Then, I just need to snag up a second mini-teardrop chandelier, since we already had one. I currently have an old computer desk to use as my future vanity....
And this stencil will look pretty divine all over the walls right? {I decided to try a stencil due to my obsession with wallpaper. However, I don't have a wallpaper budget. And the stencil is pretty incredible}
I am so crazy excited for the fun I get to have making this space dreamy. Every mommy needs a place to escape. And be a girl in the mix of a house of all boys.
So what do you think of the plan? Who else can see all the insane potential lingering in this space? Anyone else give a thumbs up to the plan of removing the wall, or tearing out walls of your own to make the most of a space? Are you able to keep up with the 101 projects we have going on?
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