Katie's Room

Yup, it's definitely her room.  It says so on the door. The stars on the door hint at a theme throughout the room.  There are small glow-in-the-dark stars on the window casings.

She probably was starry-eyed about her favorite guy as well.  The lipstick imprints, in a variety of colors, are a nice touch on the casing of the closet door.  Isn't there a better way to practice than on a door frame?  ;-)

I'm not sure why she had a restaurant booth in her bedroom.  We removed that (the light blue paint on the wall) shortly after we moved in.

For us, this room has served a number of purposes: a place to store stuff while we do other remodeling, a guest bedroom (see mattress and box spring against the wall), a donor for missing molding (note missing baseboard), and a game room (see air hockey table - duh!).  All of which have to occur in the dark because... the light fixture in this room doesn't work.  Hmmm...  Is there a pattern here?

And, once again, I should have done this post in the past tense because it looks different today.  Note the lovely, non-functioning light.

The exterior brick walls are awesome, though.

No brick veneer; these are the real deal.

And more photos are in this album.

The Old Master Bath

You might wonder why this post is not about progress on the attic.

However, it is about the attic.  Indirectly.

And here is how it goes...

The next step in the attic project is demolishing the old master bathroom and the back bedroom.  Why?  Because there's a plumbing stack that runs behind the knee wall in the attic guest bedroom, down through the wall between the master bath and the back bedroom, down through a weird broom closet in the kitchen, and into the basement.  This stack needs to be moved to prep for the future master bath and kitchen renovations.  It's hard to move the stack once the walls are closed in the attic, so we might as well do the demo from top-to-bottom now.

There are some interesting little "features" in the old master bath.  The walls are painted an off-white that has a very faint lavender hue to it.  That explains the color of the single sconce to the right of the medicine cabinet.  We have no clue what happened to its mate that should be on the left.  The plate covering the hole is attached directly to the plaster with drywall screws to provide dramatic effect and balance to the space.  The missing handle and broken stem on the hot side of the faucet allow for a refreshing start to my morning shaving routine.

The plan is to re-use this pedestal lav in the attic bath.  The cup holders, shelf and soap dish are way cool as well, though we don't have a plan for them, yet.

Another interesting feature is a cover plate in the ceiling that coordinates with the one to the left of the medicine cabinet.  There's a switch on the wall that does nothing.  I bet it's supposed to control the missing ceiling fixture.  Again attached to the plaster with drywall screws.

Another set of cool features can be found near the tub.  Look closely at the tub, six inches above the drain.  That's not a overflow drain, it's the faucet.  While it's cool, it's not terribly useful because the water just dribbles down the side of the tub.  In addition, all the water lines leading to the tub are still old galvanized pipe.  You get decent water pressure, all things considered, but once you open the faucet the first few minutes look like iced tea rather than water...

Also note the button near the light switch.  It rings the doorbell to summon my valet.  Apparently when I'm an Earl, I'll have someone to help me dry off after my soak.

I suppose I should have used the past tense in this post.  The room now looks a bit different because demolition started yesterday.

More before photos can be found in this album.

Attic Framing Is Done

The framing is done.The front of the house is framed as one large room (see plan at right).

The knee walls around the perimeter are 5-feet tall.  That still gives us plenty of floor space while not making the ceiling feel too low around the edges.  The two dormers at the top of the drawing face the street.  The double doors at the bottom of the drawing lead from the hall and are the connection point to the next drawing.

The double doors are at the top of this drawing.  They mark the transition from the guest "suite" hallway into the big room.  The bathroom isn't huge, but it is functional.  We spent some time at the tile store today figuring out what we want and think we have a plan.  The guest bedroom is quite large, but the closet is not.  If you don't have a lot of room for clothes, you can't out-stay your welcome...  ;-)

Next up will be mechanical infrastructure - electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and insulation.  Though we'll first have to do some demolition in the room below the guest bedroom to move the plumbing stack.

Attic Framing

The attic framing is nearing completion.  There is an album of progress photos here.

I've selected two to highlight here.  Both show the same spot, one before and the other after.

As a frame of reference, the curved portion of the brick wall is same one you can see on the side of the house in this picture.

All the old ineffective insulation is gone; later it will be replaced by spray foam.  A new sub-floor has been added on top of the old one to solidify things.  The knee-wall on both side of the curved area is roughly 5-feet high.  The horizontal lumber on the underside of the rafters provides a nailing surface for the sheet-rock and levels things out...

We're going to expose the curved section rather than hide it for a couple of reasons:
1-It's too interesting to hide.
2-The rafters aren't level with one another.  Without exposing the curve, this would be a 40-foot horizontal line that sags several inches in the middle.  Breaking it up helps camouflage that it's not perfectly straight.  (You don't believe that all the walls in your house are straight, do you?)

Oh.  And don't tell Jhonny that there is a bat flying around in there tonight...