Bedroom Renovation Wrap-up

If this project has inspired you to start tearing down the walls in your house, a word of caution:   MAKE SURE IT'S NOT A LOAD-BEARING WALL!!!

Ours was not, so it was easy to take out.  Load-bearing walls hold up the floor or roof above you.  They can be taken down, but you will need to find a way to support that load!

It's really worth getting professional help for a project like that.

That said, let's see just a few more pictures....

In taking down the wall, we also took out the closet. So we needed some storage.

I think one of the best design features a room can have is an unbroken expanse of wall.  Cluster all your storage (closets, shelving...) on it and the rest of the room is free to play.

I wanted to reflect the light from the patio doors at the opposite end of the room.  Alan wanted us to each have our own space.  Two Ikea STARK hall units fit the bill (and were the only major Ikea buys for the whole renovation!).

We built them out from the wall a bit and added closet rods and a shelf on either side.  The dresser belonged to my parents and the round mirror in the middle came with the house.

Right next to the patio doors was a small closet.  One of the first things I did when we moved in was to fit it with shelves to hold some of my books (you can never have too many bookshelves!).

The rest of the books (er...some of the rest...) are in old metal shelves that my Dad picked up from a science lab years ago.  They're way sturdy and still have the labels on them  for the physics magazines he used to store on them.  I really love these shelves - they have that wonderful 1950's office feel that I'm so fond of.  And the fact that they belonged to my Dad...

The only problem with them is that they're open at the ends, which makes it hard to keep the books upright.  I bought some 1X2's, painted them brown and cut them to fit.  Problem solved!

 

We were so excited by the way this project (and everything else we worked on this winter) turned out, that we ordered some new signs for the windows....

Yup.  It's for sale.