Study: Done.

She Says:

This is our study, before and after:

Here are the finishing touches for the study:

I framed pretty notecards between glass.  The shelf was an old Pottery Barn item from years ago, painted to match the cabinets.

We found the clip and wire system at Ikea to display cards and hold important reminders.  We ordered the track lighting from Amazon.

Our guests also really appreciate the futon, also from Ikea.  Surprisingly comfortable.  It has storage underneath for the bedding!  We also dedicated one of the cabinets into a wardrobe by adding a clothes rod and shelving.  The rug was actually from our previous house- it's wool, from Target, and I still love it.

This room also provides critical storage for HoneyDo's guitar collection, and I think it looks cool, too!  We got the guitar hooks from our local music store.

And I think this my favorite thing in the room- it just looks like an end table, but it's actually my filing cabinet!  (Under the cat.) I found it at Target- it was even the perfect color- and I installed a file hanger inside.  Beauty and function... love it!

Okay.

Next project.

It's massive.

The great room!

Happy New Year!

Well, it's been quite a year.  We've been working quite steadily on the house; we just haven't been blogging about it.  Our "real jobs" have also required our attention, (imagine that!) but we're really pleased with our house progress.

We've also added a couple of Sidekicks to the family...

You remember Bean...

...and Boo...

who has decided to be a full time outside cat... but has to compete with this guy for cat food...

...and this spring, Peanut joined the family...

...finally, this is what HoneyDo got for Christmas:

A silver lab named Grey Goose!

It's becoming quite the menagerie around here.  Anyhoo, we're getting the blog back on track... for the New Year!

The Great Ceiling Debate

She Says: 

As I mentioned earlier, HoneyDo wanted to vault the ceiling several feet up into the attic.

I thought that sounded like an awful lot dirty work.

We went back and forth for months, while we were working on the other parts of the house.

Him:  But think of how awesome it will look!

Her:  But think of all the drywall and insulation in my hair!

Him:  It will open up the room and make it feel so much bigger!

Her:  Hello? Hair?

In the end, HoneyDo sold me on a "compromise."  We wouldn't vault it per se, but we would include the rafters within the space of the room and lay tongue and groove ceiling boards above them.  That would add 6-8 inches to the height of the ceiling and give us a beam ceiling, which we both really wanted.

So we dove in and tore down the ceiling.  And this is what our great room looked like:

He Says: 

The existing ceiling was 5/8 drywall under paired side-by-side 2x4 rafters.  The span of the ceiling was max 12'6", and the 2x4's sagged a bit at that length.  It looked bad, but hey, if the house wasn't a piece of crap, we could never have afforded it.

I did want to do the big vault up to the roof beams, but what we ended up with looks better than that would have, and was a ton easier to build.  Good compromise.

The ceiling boards are 1x6 pine Tongue and Groove.  Lifting them up into the attic was the tough part.

I built a jig on my 12' worktable to construct the beam-covers from 1x6 and 1x4 lumber.  This kept the beam-covers straight, and when they were built, we lifted them into place over the old beams and nailed them on.

She Says:

It turned out to be every bit as dirty as I had suspected the vaulting would be.  I cannot tell you how many gallons of paint and tubes of caulk it took to finish that ceiling.  We spent a full 2 weeks on that part of the project alone- it just never seemed to end.

He Says:

Like She said, the T&G ceiling boards required a LOT of finish work before paint, which included creating our own crown moulding out of 3 separate pieces.  But it all looks so good now. Really proud of this part of the house.

She Says:

And it was Totally.  Worth it.