Boys Room Remodel Ideas

Right before Christmas, Mr. Windmill demo'd the boys' room.  We then added six more feet to the room, installed a beam, insulation, new wiring and drywall.  Now there is room for all of their furniture and their closet is at floor level.  Previously the closet was built up a foot off the floor.   

Here's a pic of the closet

My kids had to literally climb into the closet to reach their clothes.

If you missed the before pics, check out this link.

I've been thinking a lot about how I want their space to look.  My boys being 6 and 8 have their opinions too.  So we all talked about their room and this is what we came up with.  

We already own the blue and green comforters.  And since we are on a pretty tight budget (you know, a whole house to remodel), I decided to work with what we have.  

I started by showing the boys my pinterest board inspiration for their room.  To my surprise, they really liked some of my choices. 

I originally thought of grey walls, blue and green bedding and some orange accents for a little pop of color.  But my youngest superhero insisted on green walls.  At first, I wasn't sure..... but now that I see it, it might just work!

I really like that desk, but I'm afraid it is out of our price range at $440.  I'll have to hit the garage sales and flea markets this summer to see what I can find.  

Mr. Windmill doesn't know it yet, but I'm scheming for him to build some rustic book shelves.  I would also like him to build something like the cage light holder you see in the upper right corner.  My oldest really wants this light by his bed.

Who knows when we will ever get to the decorating phase!  But it's fun to dream.  

Happy Tuesday everyone!

2nd Floor Progress

Slow and steady wins the race.  Right?  Yep, uh huh, this is where you nod your head and say..... "Yes indeedy pumpkin seedy!"

The reason it's been so long since I've posted some pictures is because I really didn't have any pictures to post.

Things around the cottage have been slow.  Our Christmas was very low key.  My oldest superhero had his tonsils removed a week before Christmas.  We cleared the calendar and just relaxed.  That gave us all time to re calibrate and time for my little guy to heal.

Taking a break is good.  But sometimes it really messes with your mojo.  You see, we REALLY enjoyed doing nothing for a few weeks that it made it really hard to motivate again.  Like, really hard.  So much that "slow and steady" became just "slow"!

The upstairs sat in demolition for a while.  Mr. Windmill plugged away an hour here, an hour there.  His work schedule changed between daylight and midnight several times, which made it hard for his body to know if it was coming or going.  

Here are the pictures of the drywall coming along.

 The right side with the bathroom framed in.  

The left side.

Just a quick pic of the stairs.  I am thinking of refinishing them.  Or painting them.  Not entirely sure yet.  We definitely need to choose new railing.  The height of this railing is not up to code.  It's way too short.  

Here is a link to my Stairs Pinterest Board to give you an idea of what I'm thinking about.
So many choices, only one set of stairs............

Have a great day everyone! 

Boy's Room Demolition

The next room on the demolition list is the boy's bedroom.

Here are few snaps of what their bedroom used to look like.

The drywall headboard and house wrap wallpaper are a nice touch, don't you think?

When we installed new windows, we knew we were adding on to the back of the house, eventually making this bedroom bigger.  So once we removed the old window we had to board up the hole and install a new window that would be more centered to the new space.  

Since this room is so small, there is no other configuration for the beds.  The heads of the beds were right on the demolition/ reconstruction.  Jagged drywall tends to crumble and make dirt.   So our temporary solution was the house wrap and drywall headboard.  Umm if you can actually use the term "temporary" for well over a year.

 My resident artists felt that their room needed A LOT of art.  

Also note in this picture you can see the original brown window in the wall that used to be the exterior wall.  You can actually look through that window and see the new white window that is in the addition. This wall is going to be ripped out and a beam will replace it since it is a load bearing wall.

And just like that.....It's a construction zone.

This picture was taken from inside the addition...looking through the old brown window.

 Same view after some cleanup.  

This is almost the same viewpoint as the first picture.  

But now the wall and brown window have been removed.  

Now you can see the addition and how much more space it will give the boys. And now their dressers will fit into their bedroom.

We really wanted to replace the tub/shower in our first floor bathroom.  It currently is a two piece unit.  It has leaked a time or two when I had a crazy boy in the bath.  So it was really important for us to replace it with a one piece unit.  The thing is, we needed to buy the unit and get it in the addition before we finished building the walls.   Otherwise, it would never fit through the front door.  

The bathroom remodel is far away yet.  So, the tub unit will have to stay in the boys room until then.  

Gosh, a vanity in the living room and a tub in the boys room.  It's all so crazy around here!

But that vanity should be moving soon.  Plans change!

Changing Plans

Mr. Windmill started tearing apart the upstairs of our house and I like it!  I like it so much that I told him to take it all out...studs and all.  Yep, no more walls.  Just wide open space.  

Check it out!

Left Bedroom 

Right bedroom 

See the four studs on the right at the top of the stairwell?  Those are staying.  We have plans to add a bathroom in that space.  This will give us a lot more room to work with than our original plan of trying to squeeze a shower, sink and potty into a closet space.  

That's all for now...
Until we figure out what to do next.  YOIKS!

Some 2nd floor "Befores"

 Access to the upstairs is behind a door in the hallway.  

We have plans to open up this space, but that is in the future.

  

For now, Austin's dresser sits in the hallway because the boys' bedroom is too small to accommodate it.

Once you open the door, you are greeted with a very dark stairwell.

The stairs are U-shaped. 

U Shaped stairs are basically 2 parallel flights of straight stairs joined by a landing that requires a 180 degree turn to climb the whole way to the top.

When you reach the top floor, the first thing you see is a closet with wooden sliding doors.  We are hoping to turn this space into a small 2nd bathroom.  

That's a post all of it's own.

There are two bedrooms upstairs.  

One to the right and one to the left.  

This is the bedroom to the left.  

This is the other side of the left bedroom.  

And here is the bedroom to the right.  

The other side.

And now, after a full day of ripping and tearing, here is what the upstairs looks like.

 Right room....

 Left room.  
Check out that wiring...YIKES!



This wallpaper was uncovered in the left bedroom.
The original owners raised two boys.
Giddyup Partner!

Have a great day!

Laundry Room Floor

Today I am preparing the laundry room floor for painting. As you can see, we have a basement laundry room.  Goodness what a job!  The floor is so filthy from the work we've done so far. 

Knocking out stairs ... Building new stairs
Tearing out the old furnace ... Installing a new furnace
Ripping out old duct work ... Installing new duct work.
Ripping out old windows ... Installing new windows.
Jack hammering the floor to fix the drain ... THIS made the most mess!

I painted the walls several months ago.  

The color is Valspar's Gravity.

The color I chose for the floor is Valspar's Fountain Mist. 

Fingers crossed it will look nice.....YOIKS!

We are hoping to start demolition to the main part of our house soon.  But we need somewhere to house things like couches, chairs and bookshelves before we start.  Knocking out walls is messy business.  Our utility shelves need to be moved into the laundry room to make more space to store all the big stuff from upstairs.

We debated painting the floor in the laundry room.  I mean, why paint a floor only to make more mess?  But we decided, in the end, to just do it so we could move our big shelves in and BE DONE.  I really didn't want to have to paint under and around those big things.

Remember these?  These shelves house all the bins that contain holiday decorations and a bunch of other crap stuff. 

I've come to the conclusion that our house is very much like the "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" book.  If you want to start demolition, you need to clear the space, if you want to clear the space, you need to make room for all the stuff ....... 

Feeling Moody With Mood Boards

I see all sorts of mood boards floating around Pinterest.  I wanted to have a try but I thought I needed Photoshop.  Thanks to this post from Home Made Modern Blog,  I found out how to do it in MS Word!  

WORD! 

WORD to your mother! (Vanilla Ice anyone?)

WORD UP! (for all you WordGirl fans)

If you type the word "word" enough times it starts to look funny.

Anywho.......

Work on the inside of our house has been non-existent.  The exterior sure is looking swell, but I'm getting antsy, fidgity and sometimes downright grumpy about the state of the interior of The Windmill Cottage.  

Remember last Christmas?

All of the interior windows still look like this!

Don't get me wrong!  I am so very thankful for this little cottage every single day.  I am in love with the place.  I just can't wait to get started on the gutting and remodel!  But I have to be patient. 

So to keep myself from going crazy, I dream about the interior and resort to Pinterest on a daily basis (if any of you follow me on Pinterest, sorry for the 18 billion pictures of white kitchens).

Back to mood boards and MS Word.  I started to play a little last night.  This is what I came up with for the small entryway from the back porch.

Turquoise and orange.

I would really like to use a turquoise damask wallpaper somewhere in our house. 

Mr. Windmill made a shoe cubby just like this one several years ago.   I love it!  The boys actually use it.  It makes shoe storage and organization a snap for all of us.  

 Black, white and grey.

I am usually attracted to rooms with a lot of color. But the black, white and grey often catches my attention.  

Oh well, Just playing around.  I have a LONG way to go before I can actually put rooms together.  

I'm hoping to get some pictures of the front porch to you soon.  We are waiting for some hardware to be delivered so we can finish the railing.  

Happy Monday everyone!  

I do not own any of the photos used in the mood boards.  

These boards were created for personal use to help me decide how to decorate our home.