Hello Everyone!
Once again, I'm going to show a project from last year with a few additions. We did a lot of moving around last year. My sewing room became my daughter's room, my daughter's room became my son's room and my son's room became my sewing room. Why? You ask for all the moving around. Well, it goes like this. My sewing room was upstairs and had some water damage to the ceiling. It was a peaked ceiling and there was no attic and therefore no ventilation. Condensation formed in the hot, humid summers and caused us to have water/mold damage to the insulation and sheetrock. We knew we needed to do something but kept putting it off. Last year we decided not to put it off anymore. We were trying to think of ways to save money. We also didn't want the mess of sheetrock and everything that goes along with it. This room also had no windows because it was an exterior room when we added onto our house. (there really is a lot here to explain but I'll try and give you a good enough explanation without too many words) So, we wanted to add a dormer as well as drop our ceiling (for ventilation). We knew it would be expensive so that is why we went to brainstorming ways to make it cheaper. We planned on doing the work ourselves so it wasn't a matter of labor costs as much as a matter of materials cost. That is when we came up with the idea of finding some old barns and tearing them down for lumber. We didn't want to pay for the wood so it took a little time to find some generous farmer who had a barn he would allow us to strip down. Once found, my husband went to work. For a time, we had piles of old wood on our front porch. It was some really great wood though. I'm going to show a few of the pics of the raw "bones" of the room and building the dormer.
Sorry I don't have any pics of the room when it was my sewing room. I didn't think about doing pics until we had started tearing into it all.
Fortunately, we had our nephews over (one is in construction) to help both my hubby and my son get the dormer framed in. Unfortunately, it decided to rain and hail the day they chose to cut the hole in my roof!
That is father & son hard at work. We nailed up the barn wood onto the rafters and then nailed up lathe strips to cover the seams.
I was loving this little nailer. It went so fast and was light weight.
It was so easy to use that even my daughter got to nail a few strips. (I'm not sure what the towel around the head and the head light was all about. Guess she needed something to stick her pencil into.)
My son was a big help cutting the strips to length.
After all the wood was up, we caulked the gaps and painted it all white. Then, the end wall I painted a mustard yellow. I wasn't too sure about the color when I started.
Was this really the color I was looking for? My husband thought I'd gotten a good deal on some French's Mustard and was using that. (What a funny guy.) I have to be really careful when picking colors because once I buy it, I'm stuck with it. My hubby isn't one for wasting money on paint. I picked it so I had to use it. As we went along, the paint color grew on me.
See, it doesn't look too bad. After the painting was done, it came time for the floor. Fortunately, one of our nephews has a cabinet business. We were able to use his planer to get the weathered look off the wood and get smooth boards for the floor. It turned out beautiful.
Here is a pic of the "raw" wood and then with a coat of polyurethane. Check out the grain. The poly really made it "pop". We painted and trimmed out two built-in bookshelves.
One she uses for her books.
And one she uses for her "dresser".
This is the new dormer. I love this window. It gives an excellent view of our backyard from the upstairs. It is the only upper window on this side of the house.
And this is a very satisfied little girl in her new room! It is hard to see in this picture, but the yellow in the quilt is why I picked the yellow for the wall and doors. As you can tell, the door to her room is a French door that leads to a hallway and the top of the stairs. No privacy. We put these in originally when we added on because of the fact that there were no windows. We wanted some light to come in the room. Now with the new window we don't really need the glass doors. They really look cute though, so we left them. However, there was still the problem with privacy. Whenever we had company, I had to find a sheet to hang over the door and window. (one of the French doors is just a window; doesn't open) Well, no more. I found some curtains and a rod on clearance at Walmart.
Now we can just pull them across to afford her or our company some privacy. The other thing I have added are some new pillow cases.
I got the pattern from a blog called
MADE. She did her's with two different fabrics which are really cute but I have had a little bit of a hard time finding fabrics that coordinate with the quilt. The colors are just a little bit different. Anyway, instead of the interest of different fabrics, I just added this vintage trim that I picked up at a garage sale. It was perfect. It made them just that one step above the normal, plain, store bought pillowcases. By the way, if you are looking for tutorials on a lot of different sewing projects, check out the MADE blog. She has some really excellent tutorials. Well, that is all for now. I know this has been a long post. I appreciate you all sticking with me. It was a lot of work redoing this room but very rewarding. The bath is just through the closet so it got redone at the same time. Since this has been a long post and I have to sign off for now (ironing to do :( ), I'll save that for another day. So until next time...
Have a blessed day,
maggie jane
