Tag: Nursery

The Second Floor is Taking Shape

Hey, no more visible lathe! We have walls!

That’s the door we’re going to reuse for the new nursery, casually hanging out all akimbo at the end of the hall there. You know, where the 125-year-old subfloor is exposed? Living with the floor ripped up like that for a few weeks hasn’t been as bad as we initially thought it would be, but one of the kids’ bedrooms is over there so we will be glad to have an actual floor down sooner than later.

The wood on the second floor wasn’t in great shape when we bought the house, and when we started pulling it up for this project, we saw why. It’s a very thin material — not nearly as nice as the solid wood downstairs. It’s old for sure, and it has reached the end of its useful life, so we’re going to go ahead and redo the whole hallway rather than just patch the portion that we’re working on now. It’s something that we knew would need to be addressed eventually, but doing it now will mean holding off on some of the more fun stuff we’d rather spend our money on. (Sorry, potential front porch swing. Maybe another time.)

There was a strip of wood molding along the walls in the former kitchen (soon to be nursery!) at chest height, matching up with where the beadboard backsplash behind the kitchen sink ended. After the wood was removed, the wallpaper had to be partially stripped so that any patching to be done could adhere directly to the wall. It looked like the paper was just applied over bare drywall in some sections and we were worried about potential damage, but it’s peeling off fairly cleanly and easily with just water. After our contractor is done working in there, Brandon will finish stripping the remaining wallpaper.

I’m about seven weeks from the baby’s due date now, so I’m not sure how the timing’s going to shake out, but the baby will sleep in our bedroom at first anyway. Really, we’re just aiming to get the loudest, most disruptive work completed in time, and thankfully that looks like it will be on schedule.

August 4, 2014
Moving the Door Over

We’re still a ways off from finishing the conversion of the kitchen on the second floor into a bedroom and finishing the hall, but it’s moving along.

We were going to keep the original doorway to the room and reuse one of the other doors to fit. The cabinetry is staying though, and it would have been difficult to find a good spot for a bed without making the room awkward or blocking access to drawers. So I talked to Brandon and the contractor about it and we decided to move the door across from the other bedroom door on that side of the house.

(You can see the original plan here.)

The hallway bumps out into the room a little on that side (where the door will now be placed) because we didn’t want the hall to feel cramped, and it also makes it easier to bring furniture in and out of both rooms. Since the radiator is behind the door (and thus unusable floor space anyway), it doesn’t make much of a difference on the new room itself, and the little nook that will now be next to the door will be a great spot for a comfy reading chair or a desk.

My sister came by over the weekend, and I was explaining the dangers of scope creep to her. We’re moving the door, which means we’ll also need to move the room’s light switch over. We need to put down new flooring from where the hallway built-ins started all the way to the bedroom doors, and now we’re wondering if we should redo the flooring in the entire hallway at once. I’m not looking to change the look of the wood — it’s appropriate to the house — but there are a couple of soft spots that do need to be addressed eventually.

And then there’s the whole issue of finding a replacement for the bathroom storage that we lost. There is a huge bedroom closet that could be split into two, with half of it accessed from the hallway near the bathroom. We could probably even reuse some of the wood that we saved from the built-in that was removed, but that isn’t a project that we’re going to do right now. Instead, I’ll reorganize the small linen closet down the hall and be on the lookout for a shallow dresser, cabinet, or armoire to place near the bathroom.

Moving along, moving along…

July 21, 2014
Demolition Ahead

We’re about to start on some big changes to the second floor of the Victorian!

Thank you so much for all of the input and comments when I first wrote about our possible plans for the space (here and here). We’re still mostly going with my initial plan for reconfiguring the hallway, but I was swayed to keep the kitchen cabinetry. We’ll reuse it as closet and dresser space, as well as storage for books and toys.

Having all of the built-in storage in the hallway right outside of the bathroom has been great, and we’re sad to lose it. Making another bedroom out of an awkward second kitchen is worth it though, and we think it’s much closer to how the house was originally laid out.

The Plan

• Remove the sink cabinet
• Remove beadboard behind sink
• Repair or replace wood floor beneath the sink cabinet if necessary
• Remove plumbing and gas hookups from the kitchen space
• Swap out the sink for the one in the kitchen downstairs, if possible
• Remove the door and doorway separating the kitchen from the family room
• Trim door to size and rehang in existing doorway off the hall
• Remove the built-in storage and open up the hallway
• Remove carpet from the section of the hall near the stairs
• Repair or replace wood floor in the new section to match the rest of the hall
• Remove the door and doorway near the stairs
• Open up the end of the hall as much as possible (there may be issues with load-bearing walls and a need for headers)
• Add L-shaped jog to the end of the hallway, closing it off from the new room
• Split and relocate light switches (two switches are for the room, one is for the hallway light)
• Relocate doorbell
• Skim coat plaster walls in the hall section near the stairs (it’s textured, and the rest of our walls are smooth)
• Strip the wallpaper
• Repair walls
• Add baseboard trim to match existing throughout

There will be a whole host of other things to do when it comes time to decorate, so tasks like painting and selecting new lighting fixtures aren’t even on the radar yet. Right now, we’re just hoping we can get the construction portion of the project done before baby number three arrives in September!

July 10, 2014
Piggybacking on Yesterday’s Post About the Nursery

Yep, still thinking about where to put the nursery. I had something else planned to post today, but I’ll push it to next week instead. I looked through the 400+ photos I took of the house when it was empty and found a couple more to share that might help you understand the layout a little better. Also? I created a layout. I’m helpful like that.

I’m still not keen on the idea of moving one of the kids upstairs. Maybe when they’re older they’ll want to head up there, but while everyone is still little, I like us all on the same floor. So it’s really a choice of our family room or the second kitchen.

The Family Room

The glass doors and that large opening aren’t original, but I like them. Because of the openness, both rooms feel spacious and flooded with light. Here’s the view from our bedroom.

I adore the crazy jumble of doors everywhere. It’s one of the quirks that sold me on this house, whereas the second and third kitchens here? Not so much. Those were more like — eh, we’ll find a way to change those spaces and make them work. And while it may be nice to have the nursery right next to our bedroom and still keep those glass doors while the baby is a baby, it’s not something that will work long-term. Plus we’d still have the second kitchen which isn’t serving much of a function.

Using this room would be easy though, and requires minimal to no construction (either remove the extra two doorways, or close the doors and ignore them).

The Second Kitchen

I know a lot of you think I’m crazy for wanting to get rid of the cabinetry. I’m not set on it, but I’m not sold on keeping it either. Many suggested putting a cushion on top of the center portion and using it as a window seat, but it’s too high and I’d lean more toward using it as a dresser if it stayed.

Now, that sink? Super charming! Where it is? Super weird! I want that cabinet out of there.

Directly to the right is a linen closet, and beyond that is another bedroom (which was a sleeping porch, once upon a time). Here’s a layout of the space.

* Update: There is an alternate floor plan in the comments, showing how the hallway could be reconfigured. *

Plenty of awkwardness. For scale, the kitchen wall with windows is 12.5 feet long. If we did this room in stages, we would remove the door between the kitchen and the family room and reuse it so that we could close the room off from the hallway. The sink would go, but all other built-ins would stay. Minor construction, but we’d have to go through the baby’s room to get to the back bedroom or to the stairs.

We still have a lot of thinking to do.

March 27, 2014
Wide Angle Lenses

I rented two wide angle lenses this week: a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX. I wanted to try them out to see if that might be the next type of lens I’d like to own. They are certainly not for everyone. They’re pretty much limited in use to interiors, landscapes, group photos, and not much else. Since I do photograph interiors though, a wide angle lens would be a very useful thing to have.

Take a look at August’s nursery, as seen through my usual lens.

my typical lens, a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8

I was squished with my tripod in the back corner, and that was as much of the room as I could show you. Now, going wider and wider (but not moving my tripod), check out what these lenses can do.

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX for Canon

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX for Canon

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM

Nice, right? I liked both lenses, but I think the wider focusing range of the Canon would be more useful. That f/2.8 on the Tokina is tempting, but I’d likely be using this type of lens on a tripod for still shots, so it isn’t as important to have that low, fixed aperture as it would be with other types of lenses.

Have you ever used a wide angle lens? Or a fish-eye (they get a similar wide shot, but with more distortion)? And did you know you can rent lenses? It’s such a great option. I’m glad I can rent again until the day I plunk down the cash for a wide angle lens of my own.

June 23, 2011
August’s Nursery

Dresser and Play Chair Provided by The Land of Nod

August’s nursery is finally ready for the little guy!

He slept in a cradle in our bedroom for the first few months, but Brandon and I started putting him to bed in the crib a couple of weeks ago. Until yesterday, the room was still in all of its former pink glory.

I sewed those curtains and crib skirt from fabric by Joel Dewberry, and the brown polka dot crib sheet (no longer available) was from the DwellStudio for Target line. To the right of the crib is the odd sunken end of the room, which continues to function well as a play space.

We moved in a fun rug and an orange play chair. Obviously, August is much too small to play down there, but Eleanor loves it.

There are more stuffed animals in a basket next to the crib.

Opposite the crib is August’s dresser. There was a vintage dresser that we painted pink for Eleanor when this was her nursery, but that’s now in her new bedroom. We replaced it with this wooden one. It’s more masculine, and I really like the addition of the warm wood tone in the room. Plus it’s named after our town, Oak Park! I think it’s funny that Eleanor has her namesake mirror, and August has his hometown dresser. And that zombie clock above it cracks me up.

I’m still loving my glider and ottoman. I usually keep a water bottle and some books on the side table next to it, and it’s a nice spot for nursing. I also read to Eleanor and August in that chair, rock August to sleep, and occasionally fall asleep myself there. The Artistamps print above the table is by The Small Object, and it used to hang in my former studio.

The changing table is still made up of two IKEA Effektiv bookcases. I love the setup because we have tons of storage for all of the necessary but unlovely to look at baby items.

I keep a basket for laundry at one end, and there is a diaper pail tucked away on the other side.

I linked to many of the items above, but there is also a separate page of sources, so take a look if you’d like to know where something specific came from. If there’s anything I missed that you’re curious about (I didn’t list every tiny little thing), I’d be happy to answer questions in the comments.

It’s amazing how just a few changes from Eleanor’s nursery make it feel so different for August.

June 2, 2011