Bedroom Progress - Work Begins

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to be writing this post! It's been  about 10 months since I first started writing about moving our master bedroom to the room at the back of the house, and after we found out in the fall that we have a wee one on the way, work has been spurred on so we can also create a nursery. 


Two weekends ago was a long weekend here in Ontario, and B and I began to work away to create our own little retreat in what was once the guest bedroom / a dumping ground for things that had no home. Here are a few shots of what this room originally looked like on moving day...

{move in date - July 2009}

Yeah, that closet was pretty awful. If you were reading this time last year though, you may remember that we had a complete closet renovation, to make better use of that space. To check out what our guest bedroom was looking like by last summer, you can get a look at the very first home tour.

When we started work on that Sunday, I had a few things that needed to be cleared out. I quickly got the room from this...

To this, in no time...

Once it was empty, I wasted no time ripping out that old baseboard. While B was downstairs grabbing something else I grabbed that crowbar and went to town. Thankfully, whoever installed it didn't do a very good job and it was incredibly easy to pry off. I continued by removing the (crooked) outlet covers and the cubby door, while B removed the trim from that cubby doorway.

We already had a plan well before this point. Late the week before we had gone into the room to layout where the bed would go, along with our built in nightstands. Yes, built-in nightstands. The room is a decent size, but is relatively long and narrow, so we really didn't want to take up too much floor space. Taking a page from our closet reno, we decided to knock into the back wall to create two small cubbies with shelves that could hold a glass of water, an alarm clock, charging cell phones and anything else we may need within arms reach from bed. Though we had already taken some initial measurements during our layout planning, B did some more measuring to make sure everything we had marked out was correct before we started cutting into the drywall. Once we knew everything was right... I took over (at least for a little).

Yeah... hiding the bump, but trust me - it's there!

I did let B finish up and cut the second hole as well. We decided that the nightstand on the left would have the outlet inside of it, tucked away for easy access to charge phones. We also decided that the little door that went to that crawl space would be completely removed. It was unnecessary storage that gave us space to store things that were either misplaced or no longer needed in our home (not to mention the door was pretty drafty). We're hoping that by losing that useless storage space, it will help us cut down on unnecessary clutter (and maybe even warm the room up a little).

By Sunday night, we had two holes in the wall, along with some gaps that needed to be patched up before our nightstands could be installed. I know it seems like a lot of work for a couple of holes in the wall, but we measured at least four or five times to make sure everything was right and that our new baseboard would fit below them. This was not an easy task in an old house where absolutely nothing seems to be level.

B spent a lot of time on Monday constructing our nightstands (in the kitchen no less), and was able to get the left nightstand installed that day, as well as the holes patched up around the right nightstand.

The nightstand on the right couldn't be installed quite yet as B still required access behind the walls for the hardwired lamps we planned to install. Since that was a whole other process in itself, I'll leave that post up to B to share with you the steps we took to get our new lights ready for install.

Have you found any creative ways to increase storage in your home, or utilize space in small spaces? Would love to hear about projects you've tackled and solutions you've come up with!