thefourthdoor: Bedroom #2, After

No matter how much time passes I can still remember how hard bedroom #2 was to renovate. There are not paint fumes in the world strong enough to erase those memories. By far it was one of the more labor intensive and ball busting rooms of the house, especially considering it was just a bedroom...

May 2003-Move in, and love the large open Secret room that is hiding behind the hobbit doorway. Hate the dingy dankness that overpowers the room with its stale smell and crunchy carpet that held years worth of other people's ick. Since the roof was leaking at a considerable rate and was first on the list for repair, we stored all attic type items in this room.

Years go by and our packrat tendencies start to become apparent. The bedroom has turned into a jumble of useless stuff with no semblance of organization. Whenever we needed to store something, it just got tossed into the ever growing pile in the room.

Spring 2007- Armed with a mass of plastic bins and trash bags we tackled the room. Painstakingly weed through years of free donations and crap, making sure everything went its correct place, which might have been out to the trash pile or curb with a Free sign attached. The room slowly began to clear out.

Summer 2007- Loaded down with buckets of warm vinegar water and scraping tools my sisters in laws and I attacked the peeling wallpaper and dis-gus-ting soot (yes, soot! why? how? I have no answers) It took days of backbreaking labor to get the walls as smooth as possible, all while working during July in an upstairs room that had one window and NO AC! The only reason I survived without scraping my eyeballs out was thanks to massive amounts of iced coffee.

Thank you McDonald's, you have no idea how your x-large black iced coffee kept me calm, cool and happy enough to carry on.

After the scraping and washing came painting the room in the dead heat of a New Jersey July. We made the decision to spare ourselves that task and paid my sister in laws to do during the work week. Both girls (twins) were about to be college freshman, so they needed all the extra odd job income as possible. Paying them worked out for everyone involved.

Next came pulling up the floor coverings and we had not a clue at what could be hiding underneath the FIVE LAYERS of flooring that was down.

First layer was easy enough, it just was a smaller carpet remnant designed act as an accent rug.

Next was an almost wall to wall (but not quite!) gross scratchy flimsy type of carpet. Blech, the carpet backing had hardened and left us covered with its plastic 60's carpet dust.

Wood plank look laminate. Except the laminate was cut and laid down so that only a few feet protruded from the wall. Leaving a giant square in the middle not covered by the wood look... (look closely at the before picture up top, you'll see the this layer under the carpet)

...Because they put a carpet print laminate underneath. To give the illusion of a large area rug surrounded by wood. Except that the rug and wood were both made of plastic. and looked like crap.
The very bottom layer of flooring was another rug look laminate. Surprisingly it looked the nicest out of all the previous layers we just pulled up.

New carpet was properly laid down and we shoved our old queen bed through the door with seriously not one spare millimeter to spare. There were some serious doubts about getting any size mattress through this tiny hobbit door, so we were pleasantly surprised when normal furniture fit through with no problem!

Close up of our new Anthropologie door knob. Since the door came with no knob we went on a mission to find a solution. Unfortunately reclaimed knobs didn't work since they were missing an important part. Regular big box store knobs weren't cutting it in the design department either. We got lucky and scored this knob for 50% off in the Anthropologie sale section!