Remodeling: Part 1 – The bedroom

It started as an idea we had to rip out the carpet is some of the rooms in the house in favor of the hardwood flooring which is already in the house in most rooms. We decided to start with our bedroom because it – we thought – would be the easiest and less hassle. All we were going to do is rip out the carpet…until we started pulling all the furniture out of the room and notices that the carpet ran into the closets as one piece! Grrr! Just as well, because we also noticed the room was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Out came everything from the closets as well; this of course prompting us to paint the closets too! Then I got the idea to replace the closet rods (this was actually an old idea of mine which never came to fruition; I actually had the 2 new closet rods in the garage and there they lied for years and started to rust…new rods were required!) which meant a small pry-bar and removal of a couple of the support boards for the rods.

The next day it was off to Home Depot to buy paint and a few painting supplies. Back to the house and we started furiously patching little holes in the wall and wiping down the walls, and taping everything that needed taping, removing wall plates, vent covers – all the good stuff. Of course, like with any project, there are bound to be a snag or two…I guess so far only one in our case…while painting the ceiling, the roller punched a little hole in the drywall! Yikes! It’s probable that there was a leak in the roof before I had it replaced 3 years ago. Oh well, tomorrow was going to be another day. We finally got done with a coat of paint on Sunday night.

Monday we needed some more paint, a drywall patch and some joint compound, and some more paint rollers. Of course while you’re in Home Depot, you just can’t help but browse and look around the other isles to see what’s there, and you’d be amazed at what you remember you need! In our case we looked at some sink/vanity combos we need for the new basement bathroom, but thought oh well, we’ll just stick to what’s at hand and do this later, but we did wind up buying some drip pans for our cook top. As we struggled with installed the wrong kind of drip pans (thanks, home depot dude…), we started looking online for them, then started looking at Home Depot’s website for a sink/vanity, and decided to go back and buy one from the store and take advantage of a sale they were having. Meanwhile I remembered I bought an expensive Moen faucet back in the summer which we returned and used store credit towards the new vanity which included a faucet. So we bought the vanity and the plumbing parts for it, and decided to change some door hinges and door knobs, so we bought those as well, and went home and slapped on the second coat of paint, changed a set of door hinges and cleaned up post-painting. Now we just have to re-assemble the closets and move furniture back in!

Future projects will include re-doing the front room and immediately after the bedroom’s back in place, installing the vanity/sink combo in the basement.