House Post: Library

On a more cheerful note than our insulation nightmare: the transformation of one of our back bedrooms into a library!

We have four bedrooms. We do not need four bedrooms, nor will we ever, probably. (8 weeks of marriage and the “so, when are the kids coming?” jokes started at the reception, to which my standard answer has been “ALL THE DOGS!”) We do plan to have large gatherings of friends for hiking and ski weekends, so we were not wild about completely losing that fourth bedroom (by, say, turning it into a master bathroom).

So! Library it is, which will leave the floor open for an air mattress, and we got one of those uber-expensive super-fancy ones for the wedding, like you are practically on a real mattress and it keeps itself inflated. Which should be just fine on occasions when we are truly full to the gills.

Previously, it was what we called the Lighthouse Room, for, well, obvious reasons.

So, Step 1: remove wallpaper. This went REALLY EASILY. After all the awfulness of the master bedroom, this was a joy to do. Then I scrubbed the walls and the whole “use the appropriate wallpaper paste wash” actually worked, which tells you just how bad that master bedroom was.

Step 2: holy mackerel was there a lot of patching in this room, and I even found spots I missed after I painted and they are just going to have to stay there, good grief.

Step 3: priming with Kilz oil-based primer just in case we missed any wallpaper paste.

Step 4: paint! We went with Sherwin Williams “Worldly Gray” which does not photograph terribly well but is a nice soothing and neutral sort of sandy gray. I wish maybe it had been a little more blue, but I am by no means unhappy with the color.

Step 5: goodbye rug! *happy sigh* Then a long vacuum, followed by a thorough mopping with Old English oil

Step 6: bookshelves! These are IKEA’s Ivar shelving system with a light white stain applied to plain pine. They were fine in previous apartments but now that they are in this much nicer room, they are sorely lacking. So they will be upgraded eventually. For now, they are serving their purpose.

Step 7, still in process: unpacking the books, whew.

Still needed: new curtains, new rug, and getting the radiator sandblasted and repainted. None of those things are a crisis, though. For now, I’m really, really excited to get all my books unpacked, put the old curtains back up & one of our extra rugs on the floor and have a proper room. I think I will also move my sewing table + sewing machine in, and strongly consider storing my extra yarn in that closet, along with my file cabinets to free up space in my office.