Nursery/Office Renovation Step 1

I’ve finally got off of the lazy train and managed to get some work done around the nursery yesterday.

I started by pulling off the baseboards that need stripped, revealing 100 years worth of dirt and dust and one 1956 baseball card from the Washington Senators worth approximately $.99 on ebay. I moved several books, files, papers, etc. down to the dining room and with the fortuitous timing of a Billy and Michele drop-by we got the bookshelf and filing cabinet down as well. Then I tore out the bar and filthy shelves in the closet. Turns out much of the wood was walled in so its removal exposed missing lathe and resulted in about a three inch wide and half inch deep gap in the plaster running the perimeter of the closet. Not to be deterred I proceeded to nail in a few scraps of wood we had (including a yard stick much to Clint’s chagrin) and slapped almost an entire bucket of plaster in there. Once that dries (say around 2010) I’ll put a few more coats of plaster, wet sand and paint. Tonight I’m headed to the container store where they’re having one of two annual elfa sales to design our daughter or son’s future closet. Organization here is going to be key because the toy storage available in our house is frighteningly minimal. We’re thinking that surely children’s clothes cannot take up THAT much room, so if we can pull off a few drawers in the closet for toy storage we’ll be set.
So once again we’re on track to have an awesome closet, and a room that’s an eternal work in progress. I think we gravitate to the small areas because we can’t resist that instant gratification that comes so seldom in renovation work.

Long list of next steps

As promised, here are our tentative nursery/office plans:

-remove doors strategically to keep Chloe out of areas and keep it dark/quiet when Clint is up working late

-heat gun & strip door frames & window sill

-heat gun & strip the sides of the stairs (Clint is keen on this)

-gut the nursery closet in preparation for system similar to that which is in our coat closet

-pull off all baseboards and trim that we’ll salvage (half of it in the nursery doesn’t match). Take to get dip stripped.

-do all finishing work on dip stripped trim (involves a screwdriver and a hammer to knock off the pieces that didn’t come off in the process then sanding, and finally cleaning with denatured alcohol & steel wool).

-heat gun and strip all doors-5 in total (still need to do the one downstairs also)

-stain and shellac trim

-paint nursery

-new light fixture/fan (not that our 2 bare bulbs in the ceiling aren't beautiful)

-completely move out of the upstairs so floors can be refinished

-get floors refinished, move back in (this is looking like it's going to be end of September- cutting it close)

-*maybe* install a whole house fan. Clint is worried about fumes from the floor refinishing and would feel better with this sucking the air out

-build pieces necessary for the office to effectively function as both an office and a nursery

-assemble/hang nursery furniture

-put closet organizer in our bedroom closet that has been in our garage since December (we're nothing if not optimistic)

-buy ikea wardrobe to make up for lost closet in nursery

-possibly get Flor tiles and install them in closet floor- this may be necessary because another of the great mysteries of an old house- it looks like part of the closet floor at one point in time caught fire.

-get remaining missing trim milled

-one day, get new windows

And poof! We’re done! Just like that! Except I’d imagine for all this to occur start to finish we’re looking at a similar timeframe to the work we did downstairs which only took- oh- about a year. WITHOUT a baby. Occasionally I think that we should wait to do any of it until after the baby is here, but then I realize that if it’s disruptive to be moving out of the upstairs and staying away from the house now, it’ll probably be tenfold with an infant. Not to mention the added worry of a tiny one learning to crawl who undoubtedly will like to eat things off the floor- like paint chips. Thus we are charging ahead. I keep reminding myself that we often survive, and even thrive on chaos, by often repeating to ourselves what has quickly become our motto- “it’s an adventure!”

Heading back into the storm

I’m sure by now you’ve realized our contributions to this blog seem to run in fits and starts- really it is an accurate tracking of how our work on the house tends to go. I’m amazed when I think back to the phenomenal productivity I was able to achieve back when I was in grad school and stripping trim literally every night. I’m not sure if it’s the pregnancy or the weather (or the combination of the two) but any of the work I have to do I just can’t seem to get motivated to tackle. Part of that surely rests in my inability to get the things done that are most pressing- such as stripping the door frames upstairs. If I haven’t fully explained how renovations upstairs need to go- here’s the abbreviated version.

One of the more critical aspects to the entire upstairs renovation is getting the floors refinished. Naturally anything that could potentially ruin newly finished floors, such as stripping wood, must be completed first. Since we realized that we can pay someone to do about 75% of the work stripping the trim and because that work is off limits to me until the baby is eating solid foods (due to the possibility the paint could be lead-based) our new approach has been to pull it off what we can and take it to New Albany where they “dip strip” it. This leaves us with only door jambs and window sills that must be stripped in place, which leaves us with only Clint and a heat gun to get this done. There are two challenges inherent with this- one is that unlike me, heat gunning is not Clint’s favorite type of renovation work. Second, those of you who know Clint are aware that he likes to keep his schedule at about 110%. Nevertheless we managed to get around to starting this process under threat of the floors possibly being redone in two weeks. What we hadn’t anticipated is how disruptive this will all be. We started in the office/nursery with the closet, which meant removing all of Clint’s clothes and my sweaters. Currently they are parked in our bedroom on a garment rack and sweaters are stacked in the corner on our shoe rack. Now we have to decide just how much we’re going to tear apart the office/nursery (and in the process our bedroom) to be able to work on it to get it to the place we ultimately want it to be. Do we do a little bit at a time making about 4 times the work over the long haul, or do we just go forth and go crazy, making our lives chaotic for the time being, but in the long run much more manageable? Normal people might choose the former option with a baby on the way in only 8 short weeks- but order and logic really never have been our strong suits. I’m still not sure how it will all go, or just how much we can get done before baby Reno arrives but I’ll post our tentative plans tomorrow so everyone can see just what we’re up against.