We are well underway in renovating the attic bedroom for our toddler son, Milo. As I shared in last week’s post, we are transforming a very funky and eclectic room into a space for Milo to sleep and play. We also wanted space in case any other family and friends need a space for their kids to sleep, hence we’re putting in two twin beds. But before we can start decorating with furniture, the room needed to be completely reset.
At first we thought that would just mean paint, but as we took apart some of the existing built-ins in the room we discovered patches of unfinished flooring, holes in the wall and missing dry wall. We needed to finish the flooring, patch the holes and smooth everything with plaster before we add primer for paint.
Trying to renovate with a toddler running around is tough, so I spent most of this phase keeping Milo downstairs in the living room while Joe worked. Joe needed a helping hand a few times so our dear friends drove up the mountain to help with the flooring as well as Joe’s dad with the priming. The flooring was fairly easy. There were just two small areas that needed finishing and the previous owner left two cases of the flooring he used for the room.
We removed a lot of the built in storage because it was taking up so much space. Milo does not need a wall of closets, plus they weren’t easily accessible by a small child. Milo likes to get his own toys and books for playtime and we didn’t want him to get frustrated with tricky doors. We removed the closet storage and these large built-in end tables that framed the previous owners daybed. They were just in the way and served no purpose for us. With all those pieces out the room, there was space for two beds and simpler storage options.
Most of the holes were simple plaster repairs, and we just need to smooth over and sand. However, there were also strange gaps between some of the framing and Joe cut new pieces of wood to fill in and then plastered over those.
We also discovered one wall was just a piece of board, not actually dry wall. We knew just painting wasn’t going to conceal the odd texture and so Joe installed proper dry wall. It was a bit of an adventure getting the drywall up the mountain with our Subaru Forester. Joe had to strap it to the roof, they were eight feet long, and carefully drive up the road 5000 feet in altitude to our cottage. Some pieces and corners were lost, but luckily we could cut torn edges off and have enough drywall for installation.
Installing the drywall itself was actually pretty easy. Joe used a utility knife and a straight edge to cut the drywall and fiberglass tape on the seams to hold together while drilling into the studs. After that, he applied plaster over the tape and smoothed over the nail holes. He worked around the built-in shelves (which I still need to come with a plan to paint) and created a complete wall instead of mismatched boards.
Our next step is painting which I will share next week for Week 3 of the challenge. The project will get prettier I promise, but all this prep helps ensure a clean finished room that looks good after it’s painted. Thank you again for following along here on the blog and Instagram! If you’d like to see what the other participants are decorating, visit the One Room Challenge blog.
