Bedroom and Bathroom Update, Part I: the Bedroom

I've been slowly making progress in my bedroom over the winter and spring. It's been slow because it's plaster work, which seems like an endless round of plaster-dry-sand-plaster-dry-sand-plaster-dry-sand. Okay, it doesn't seem like. It IS. You do it until you begin to shake drywall dust off your underpants when you pick them up off the floor, and then you start to carry beers up to your bedroom to drink while you work. And then maybe you decide that perfection is kind of a bitch and "good enough" is easier to live with. I live in an older home, so imperfect walls make it "quaint and cottage-like," right?

Sure.

Again for those who are just joining us, this is what the space looked like in 2011:

That view above in more recent months became this:

And then we continued on around the corner:

It's also been tedious because I've been doing a section at a time, by hand, and cleaning up after each step to keep the dust way down. I don't have the room to move all the way out of my bedroom while this is going on, so it's been a lot of months of making little messes, cleaning them up, scooting furniture this way and that, and doing it again. It's been a little crazy making. But progress has been ongoing.

The color is Valspar Bay Waves. It's actually a bit darker than it shows in the photos, but it's still a very soft, dove-like gray. I like how soothing it is. The brown-painted window is now white, after about eleventy-billion coats of primer and paint.

I've primed the floor, and moved the dressers into position for the next stage.

The color on the walls is actually the same, though it appears darker in the nook. I love comparing these photos to the very first one! And if you're alarmed by the difference of floor color in the nook versus the rest of the room, don't be. That's just a primer coat, and they got it as dark as they could to make for easier coverage when the paint goes down, but it isn't as dark as the actual floor paint. That'll go down last, when I'm completely finished with wall work.

You can just see, on the bottom left edge of the photo above, the unframed doorway to my closet. That is a whole other can of....well, not worms. More like a pile of shoes on the floor and tangles of bras on hooks. But definitely a whole other can of project.

Now I'm done with all of the walls except this one, the Wall of Tragedy:

It used to be a wall of shelves made (badly) out of particle board and faux wood vinyl panelling, that got pulled apart when a plumbing leak was discovered in the wall when we moved in. There are some other issues with this wall, which I'll discuss in Part III. Stay tuned for that. That's my floor stencil hanging up there. It seems like as good of a place as any. To the left is the nook again (we've come full circle around the room). And to the right is the door out into the hallway. My bedroom door opens out into the hallway rather than in, due to crazy roof lines.

There's a ton of small things left to do. I need to clean up the window panes from the painting job, and there's also still a broken pane here, which I will get to next summer when I reglaze from the outside. There is a missing sash lift and I need to clean up the lock. I need to touch up paint dings and drips here and there. I need to find the plate covers for the outlets (they're around here somewhere....).  And of course there's still trim work. I feel closer to done, though. It's a good feeling.

As the post implies, there's two other renovation updates coming soon, next time on the upstairs bathroom. Stay tuned!