Time For Bed!

Ok, I could see how that would be confusing, when Jessie says "time for bed" what she really meant was "time to build a bed before you sleep in it." Not cool.


Thankfully, she already had her own set of plans for a super-tall, indestructible bed that would have space underneath for clothes bins, a bed for Optimus that he will never ever use, and other normal bedroom items like a chop saw and air compressor fittings. All I had to do was shut up and cut or hold boards how she told me to. This was quite nice.



Before you knew it, we had a bed! Simple, quick, easy.



Ok, if you're reading this you know it couldn't just happen like that. But I'll let Jessie tell that tale...


Side note, while working on the bed I went to get a beer from our fridge. Actually from the "freezer" because a while ago our freezer stopped working; the fridge was actually substantially colder. No problem, now we have a fridge and a beer fridge!

Yeah. Apparently the freezer started working again at some point. In our house when someone says "grab me a cold one" they need to be more specific.

Ok, so now that we had a huge bed for Optimus to hog, we thought the room felt a little stuffy....yep, that wall has to go.


We had planned on making some changes anyways, like adding in a closet and making the other bedroom into a master bathroom, thus necessitating a doorway. Probably best to do the dirty demo work before bringing our clean mattress into the room. The main attraction of this wall is the chimney that we wanted to expose. Raw original brick would look awesome in our bedroom and bathroom....if it weren't for the inch-thick layer of plaster applied directly to the brick, it would be easy. Jessie's brother and sister took turns a while ago with hammers attacking the plaster and made tons of progress. We however, are not as awesome or patient as they are, so we brought in the heavy artillery.



We managed to clean off the bedroom side in less than 30 minutes and it was actually pretty fun. Air-powered demolition tools = fun. One problem with this much fun is the amount of dust and crap it kicks up in the air. The hippo light will help demonstrate to your left with the cleaned off brick to the right. Another problem is the several hundred pounds of plaster (basically concrete) waste that you end up with in Rubbermaid containers that can easily bury a room's floor.

Jessie will elaborate on the design details of the room, but there are a few things we needed to make room for, such as the closet. The door to the other bedroom would be entering directly into the closet, so we removed that with the entire frame and transplanted it to the other opening. Lest we forget, this house is really old, so we encountered plenty of annoyances, the least of which was probably the hinges for the door that been painted over so much it no longer needed screws to hold it in place. The door actually opened and closed just fine without them. Super fun.

This leaves us with a gaping hole in yet another wall, but a new, functioning entrance to the future master bath. Even better, it matches the rest of the house because it's original, meaning less new materials to buy/consume. In the end, this is actually progress. I mean, we did end up sleeping in a room with three walls for a couple months, but as of a few weeks ago we've got 3.5 walls....so we're almost there!

Tom

Currently listening to "Buried Alive" by Avenged Sevenfold

Cry, Cry, Cry

Though this was the song I was listening to at the end of my last post, it seems to be more appropriate right now.  I love drawing plans on engineering paper (you may have noticed).  It makes me feel pretty smart.  Tom likes to go over it and tweak the dimensions to use the least amount of materials possible.  We make a pretty good team.  We also love building things together and haven't gotten a chance to do much of that since we have moved in.

In comes the bed platform.  Originally, I wanted to go with Anna White's plans for a King Store Bed on Knock Off Wood.  It's beautiful and functional and after I figured out the materials we would need for the king-size model, I looked at the price tag.  Oye.  Those plans go out the window even though they are so beautiful.  We just can't afford to spend $200+ right now even though a box springs and frame would be more than that.

So we went with 2x4's and plywood.  We had some 2x4's in the basement from deconstruction (yay for reducing and reusing!) and leftover plywood, so we didn't need to buy nearly as many 2x4's.

After the plans were finalized, we measured the actual mattress (the sweet one we got on a super sale from overstock.com).  King beds are supposed to be 76"x80" unless it is a California King, which ours was not.  Dimensions for our bed were 75"x79".  Another oye! here.  At this point, the original beautiful drawing on that engineering paper was looking rough from edit after edit after...you get the point.

Finally, we started measuring and cutting and loving our chop saw that has the amazing mitering feature (more about that in a tutorial to come).  So all the pieces were cut and we realized that our platform was going to incredibly heavy.  Oh well.

Next step is to actually assemble the pieces.  We went to our two stashes of screws - we had 3" screws!  However, they were decking screws for outdoor use, not wood screws.  My stash contained 5 boxes - 1 1/8", 1 1/4" and 2" wood screws.  Well, that's not going to work when we need to go through 1 1/2" wood and actually secure it to another piece.

You know how we come across roadblocks?  Ta-dah!  Here's another for your entertainment.  At least we got half the work done.  Optimus even helped!

Life is funny?

Jessie 

Currently Listening to "Primative (The Way I Treat You)" by Ambulance Ltd

Manic Monday...Wait...It's Wednesday.

Recently, I have managed to have a little bit of rage in me.  I think I need to start doing some roller derby again or something else that will give me a way to get rid of some of that.

Why hello Wednesday.  You provided me with the perfect motivation to get out some rage.  

Our house is a mess.  We've been staying in our guest bedroom since we moved here.  Well, we actually have 2 guest bedrooms, but one of them is going to be turned into the master bathroom, so we don't consider that a guest bedroom...not really.  Anyway, the closets in the guest bedroom are incredibly horrible.  Somebody nailed up a few 2x4's to set stuff on.  While we are in the process of getting and redoing furniture, we STILL don't have enough room for all of our "stuff".

I went into our room to find shoes today and this was the best I could do.

Luckily I have more than one of the exact same size of New Balance shoes.  Yay ebay!

Anyway, we finally splurged (of course it was on sale) and ordered a beautiful new bed off of overstock.com that is an 11" foam memory mattress.  It should be here in the next few days, which also motivates me to finish my headboard and built the platform bed with storage underneath.  Now I just have to figure out how to I want to design the platform and draw up some plans.  Ahh, the life of the unemployed/domestic engineer.

To clarify, that is not our frame - just the mattress.  I'm sure the UPS guys will be thrilled to deliver that 78lb package.  If you are looking for a bed and have been given the run around at the mattress stores (we did that for a few months), I would highly recommend the online route, especially using overstock.com method.  While it is nerve-wracking to spend money on something you haven't actually tried out, the reviews are wonderful. 4.5/5 stars with 283 reviews.  Pretty good, in my opinion.

Anyway, besides giving me an itch to make an Anthropologie inspired quilt for our new bed, this also pushed me to start getting our room underway.  I'm sure Tom is THRILLED about this since I have a million and three other projects going on as well.

To give you some perspective of how my day went... (in pictures, of course)

Oh, what a beautiful wall.

...you never know which tool will be right for the job until you get started working (at least on old houses)

I couldn't find safety glasses, so this had to suffice.

So the fireplace on this side does not exactly match the one on the other...I think there is a shelf of brick on this side of the chimney.  Hard to explain, I know.  It is so hard to peel 3" of plaster/concrete off of brick.  Any suggestions besides chisels?

Bonfire, what, what!

Hello future closet!

Why hi there future bathroom....WAYYYY future. 

Hello drywall.  What a nice? surprise to see you in an 87 year old house on top of lathing strips!

They even used screws as fasteners.  Tom is going to freak out that our house has some element of the "best, most sensical, logical, hardcore, most awesome ever" fasteners in it. I was fairly certain we just had nails.  Wrong.  There is a lone screw (ok, maybe about 4 to hold up that piece of drywall)!

Future doorway from master bed to bathroom.  This is what it looks like from the "bathroom" side with my pseudo-finished headboard in the background.

Oye.  Now what?

In the process of this mess, ahem, I mean PROGRESS, I managed to knock one of the platinum prongs off my wedding ring, which means...no more diamond.  I was even wearing gloves!  What the heck.  Oh well.  We'll find it.  That pile of rubble is only so big.  Sometimes I curse myself for being so hardcore.

...and this was only one of the things I did today.  More to come.

Jessie

Currently Listening to "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga (Yes, I have guilty pleasures.  Don't judge.)