The Room

Let me start by saying this is in no way a complaint or an effort to disparage anyone in any way.  This is only to illustrate just how far this room has come recently in what we did to it.

Our son, Himbeere, has been living in his room for quite a while.  He is not the neatest of tenants that has occupied that room.  This has been a trend for a long time.  This was his space and we pretty much gave him free reign on it, not bugging him (very much, anyway) about what condition he kept his space in.  He had moved out a couple of times in recent years but each time had come back too soon for us to do any reclamation work on the room. So when he recently moved out in what seems like a permanent move, we decided we wanted to turn the room into a guest room but would need to do some work to it to get it to that point.

Just before he moved out I took a couple of "before" pictures.  It was full of furniture and all his other stuff.  I'm not sure how much use his dresser actually got.

Anyway, it took him a number of weekends to move all the stuff he wanted out.  The rest he said we could toss, which we did.  The big stuff he was kind enough to bring up stairs and load into the trailer so all I had to do was hook it up and drive it to the dump.  Anyway, once he gave the okay, that he was officially and completely out of the room, we began cleaning and getting it ready to make some changes.

The plan was to keep the changes simple, just some painting and changes in furniture.  However, once we got the room empty and clean we noticed some spots on the one wall that looked like they might have been wet.  That, along with the musty smell, made us take a closer look. That's where the whole project began to go south.

We turned the carpet back in the corner and saw where it had been wet, actually was still a little moist, its hard to tell with cement sometimes.  So we ended up taking the lower part of the wall covering off.  It was just panel, not drywall, which made it a little easier, at least.

But then we had to see if we could find where the moisture had come from.  We never found any place that was an obvious spot so we ended up treating the window on the outside, to make sure it was sealed properly.  Mosebeere was our technical advisor through all of this, helping us know what we needed to do, what to use, and how to do it. While all that was going on outside, we had put a dehumidifier and fans inside to dry the room out.  It took a couple of days, but it did dry out and the musty smell went away.

The first step, as we began putting it all back together, was to treat the wall with mildew retardant, to seal the wall and inhibit the growth of any mildew or mold.

Then, after getting the material we would need to close up the wall, we spent some time measuring and cutting, to piece the materials back together for the wall. 

Schwartzbeere was also a tremendous help, with actually doing a lot of the cutting, lifting, and building, as we put the wall back together.

In replacing the insulation in the wall, we ended up having to cut ten pieces to fit in between the boards that had held the paneling on; we just stayed with paneling, rather than doing drywall.

Our "shop", where we did all the cutting, was the great out-doors, the place where we had enough room.

Then we took all the pieces downstairs and installed them.

It took us a while, a bit longer than we originally thought it would, but we finally got everything back together and were finally ready to begin painting.  From the time we discovered the moisture until we had the wall back together, it seemed like Murphy's Law was in full operation, nothing went as simple as it seemed like it should have.  But finally it was done and ready to be painted.

Part of all the work to be done in the room was repairing the shelf in the closet.  It hadn't been installed correctly way back when, and, as a result, had collapsed a few years ago.  Since we were doing all this work in the room we decided to fix the shelf, too.

That meant working in the "shop" some more to measure and cut some boards.

Then they had to be stained to match the paneling already in the closet.

But after a bit, they were all done and ready to install. They just needed some drying time first.

Soon enough they were dry so I gathered everything I needed together and got ready to get at it.

We cleared out all the stuff from the closet and got started

A measurement here, a few screws there, and pretty soon the shelf was up and in place.

Much more serviceable than before it fell out of the closet way back when.

There was also the matter of the door to the room, it has never fit well since we bought the house.  We had worked at it before but this time we were determined to fix it.  That involved a lot of sanding.  But in the end, Brombeere won and the door closed and fit like a normal door.

Over the next several days work on the room continued, painting and then touching up, getting the finishing touches in place.  The detail work.

Murphy's Law continued to operate in full force as we'd find this little detail or that one that had to be altered or fixed, sometimes requiring some work to be redone.  For example, we had painted the door after all the sanding because it was too hammered and damaged to just leave.  So we taped the door knob because it was the old kind that came off by pressing a tab instead of undoing screws. Pressing the tab proved to be too much so we just carefully taped it. But when we took the tape off we found it hadn't been fully tight and paint had gotten where we didn't want it. So we worked harder on the door knob and Schwatrzbeere (to the rescue again!) was finally able to get it off.  Then we did the painting around the hole and bought a new door knob.  But when it came time to put on the new knob we found the hole from the old one was too small and more work had to be done to make the new one fit.

Then we also had to do some work on door frame, to the little hole where the strike plate went, since it also didn't line up like it needed to for the new knob.

Once the holes were in place enough to fit the new knob, we had to do some more patching and painting.  But gradually the room continued to progress towards being done.  We even had a "guest" stay in the room at that point.  Maulbeere was over for a visit and stayed a couple of days.  So she got the honor of being the first one to occupy the newly remodeled (nearly) guest room, even though it wasn't fully done quite yet.

Maybe it was poor planning, but the thing that ended up left to still be done at this point was the ceiling tiles.  There had been a time when the occupant of the room would lay on the bed and throw things at the ceiling.  Sharp, pointed objects.  Yeah, that can be hard on the ceiling, if you look close at the picture you can see myriad little holes and other marks in it.  As you might imagine, the tiles needed to be replaced.

Fortunately, at this point in his life he recognized the folly in having done that and offered to put the new tiles in.

That was nice because, as it turned out, it was more difficult than we imagined.  And it took a bit longer than we thought it would take, as well. 

Rather that totally redo the ceiling, we just got new tile.  You would think that replacing ceiling tiles would be fairly simple, but that was not the case. Cutting the tiles turned out to be a challenge. Hanging the tiles also involved some hazards,  We ended up losing some.  It's sold in packages of 10 so we only had two extra pieces.  In the end, it worked out exactly right; we needed those two extra pieces.  But when we were done, it looked pretty good

Himbeere did a good job of getting them all in and making it work.

I say that it was poor planning to leave the ceiling tile to the end.  That's because as we took the old tiles down, all the years' accumulation of dirt, dust, and other unmentionable stuff fell down onto whatever was below it.  That, along with the mess we made as we cut those tiles that needed to be trimmed, all had to be cleaned up.  Another case of doing, redoing, and redoing.  We really should have done the tiles before the carpet was installed.  But, alas, we didn't.   So we had to vacuum and clean yet again and strip the bed so we could wash the bedding again.  Then remake the bed.

But at last, it was nearing completion.  Bed made, furniture in. window coverings on, wall hangings up.

And finally, the room was pretty much done ...

... officially ready for "guests"

By and large, we don't think of family as "guests", they are more than that, they are family.  And now, Brombeere has put together a comfortable, private space for them when they come.  That's a good thing.