We moved into the master bedroom this weekend. We’ve been in the house for almost two years, but I didn’t start working on the room until about 18 months ago. We had a couple of dependencies that slowed us down, and I fully expect the next room to go much quicker. I have posted several photo-albums broken into broad categories

• Demolition — What’s there to say about this, you basically rip everything out.
• Closet — The master bedroom did not have a closet. The adjacent bedroom had two. We cut a wall out, and closed a wall up, and all of a sudden the master bedroom now has a closet.
• Framing — We had to do a bit of framing work. I don’t believe the attic (or 3rd floor) of our house was originally finished, but it is now, and that is where my office is. The supports in the ceiling of the second floor were not what they should be to support additional weight on the third floor. To fix this we sister’d some boards next to the existing ones in order to provide additional support. Also, the walls that had baseboard heating had to be built out so that the heating would sit the same distance off the wall once we replaced the lath and plaster with dry wall.
• Electric — Next we ran the electrical. We had several dependencies in order to do this project. We had to add a bigger breaker panel to accommodate the additional circuits, and we decided to upgrade to 200 amp service while we were at it. We also had to build a chase in the living room in order to have a place to run the cable. While we were at it, we went ahead and ran circuits for the other two bedrooms, and a circuit to the third floor dedicated to my computer. We also put 220 outlets in the master bedroom and on the third floor for air conditioners. We also used this opportunity to wire all the bedrooms and the third floor with phone, cable TV, and ethernet. All of this wiring is brought back to a central panel in the basement.
• Insulation — We installed insulation in all walls and in the ceiling.
• Sheetrock — We hired this project out. Due to the stairs going to the second floor the drywall had to be cut down to 6 foot sheets. This meant there were going to a lot of seams. Now I can do drywall (sort of), but I don’t get a lot of practice at it. I was afraid with so many seams it would turn out poorly. That isn’t the look we were going for so we figured it best to pay someone who knew what they were doing.
• Hardwood Floor — We laid a new hardwood floor. We just didn’t want the mess, and expense of trying to restore the original floor. I know it’s a copout, but this provided us with a good solution for the transition between the bedroom and new closet.
• Finishing work and final product — The molding was premade. However, I made the trim around the windows, and the sill. The closet jamb was much wider than a typical door, and I had to custom make all of the pieces for that as well.

Even though I still have a couple of minor things to finish up, it feels really good to have this project under my belt. I am eager to get started on the guest bedroom. I am hoping we have completed sometime in 2007.

Many thanks are owed to Harry (my father in-law) who was a tremendous help.

View the photo albums for this entry.