PHASE THREE: Change of Plans
phase one | phase two | phase three | tour my house
About three-quarters of the way through my upstairs remodel project, I met and started dating a fantastic guy. We decided to get married and made the hard decision to put my beloved house up for sale so that I could move over to his side of the Puget Sound. The decision was painful but it did light a fire under me to get the upstairs finished!
November 2006 through June 2007: |
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| These are views of the stairway leading up to the upstairs. The first one is looking down to the main floor mud room. The second one is looking up to the upstairs landing. You can see the absence of a hall light fixture that I later fixed by installing a really nice craftsman style light. To the right in the second photo, you can also see the glass blocks that I installed in that wall of the the bathroom to let in a little light. |
 Here is a look at the stairs going down, from the landing. I later painted the treads of the stairs that paint color you see sitting there. It helped define the stairs and pulled the wood floor color into the stairway. That funky square door there on the opposite wall is the last remaining original access door to that side of the upstairs. I had plans to remove it and put in a built-in shelf but time ran out on me before I got to it.
Originally, the bath wall was set in about six inches. When I ripped it out, I reset it to the edge of the floor to match the wall below.
To the right, you can see the window that looks out on the yard. |
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| Here's a shot of the interior of the bath, after I installed the toilet. When I ripped up the upstairs, I found many interesting objects in the walls. This solid brass paper holder was one of them. The photo on the left shows the glass block on the bath side of that wall. This photo was taken before the door had been hung but you get the idea. The only thing I think I wish I'd done differently would be to have spaced the glass blocks out a little more but they did function quite well. At the end, I framed them in with 1.5" trim molding and they looked awesome. |
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| The original bathroom had very little light. When I had the electrician come in, I had him run wire to this new wall so that I could put the cabinet/mirror below it. The other side of the bath, with the sink, was against the eaves wall and didn't allow for this. My original plan for remodeling also included putting in a shower in this bath, which would've been to the right of this photo but again with the running out of time. It ended up being a really good thing that I put the house up for sale when I did. |
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| One last shot of the bathroom. The door jam has been put in and the door ready to be hung. The new sink and toilet look awesome and floor is just being finished up. The photo to the right is the other side of the bath wall, in the main upstairs room. I had to work around the chimney so I chose to wallboard it in. When I extended the bath wall to make room for the shower, I ended up having some dead space against the chimney so I put in this built in shelf. |
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| Here's a shot of the under-eaves built in closet that I designed to hold all my fabric and craft bins. It doesn't look all that big but it extended for twelve feet and did a great job of storing everything. I made these tongue-and-groove doors all by my wee self. In this photo, they're being painted and getting ready to get hung. |
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| Here's a photo of the upstairs main room, looking west. The wall with the fake fireplace on it has four outlets for all my power needs. The wall to the right is the bath wall. |
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| Here's a shot of the upstairs main room looking east, which is why the photo is a little dark. It was morning when I took this and the camera was trying to auto correct and focus. This view was loverly, looking down onto my neighbor's nice yard and big maple tree. |
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| The photo on the left is taken from the main room looking into the bedroom. The hallway is created by the two closets that I put in. Look at those outlets... power, I tell you. The photo on the right is taken while standing in the bedroom. That window, on good days, gave what is called a peakaboo view of Mt. Rainier. Seriously... Also, you can see one of the four built ins I created. |
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| Here's a shot of the bedroom closets and looking from the bedroom back into the main room. |
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| Here's a shot of the bedroom looking east, with the two east built ins and the east closet. |
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| Part of my efforts upstairs included trying to remain within the craftsman style. I found this awesome fixture at Home Depot. |
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| I ended up finishing up the upstairs on July 18th, 2007. |
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