Office to Bedroom Progress

As much as I’m excited to get this bedroom going, it’s definitely taken a bit more time than I wanted to get moving on it.  While there are a variety of excuses, the big issues were how much I dislike emptying rooms, demoing walls, and needing help moving the big things.  It’s me.  I’m the problem.

But now that I’ve recruited enough help and carved out enough time, we’re getting going!  I have the bed in the room, the desks out, and the wall ready to hang some doors.  As an office, I never prioritized adding the closet door, and the door to the office was always quite narrow.  So, a big part of this project did involve taking down the entry to the room for a reconfiguration.

The Library

With the narrow office entry not realistically being usable space in this basement room, I elected to move it.  By reconfiguring the walls, I’ll lose a little space in the bedroom and make up for it by adding more defunct storage space into the library.  I’ll also improve access to the furnace and the water main shut off… both should be easier to access in emergencies.  

That does mean we’re temporarily storing a lot more out of the library… while moving the office… and moving around bedroom things… and getting the laundry set up… It’s a bit of a disaster area!  Instead of the standard renovation, chaos, and safe spaces that I tend to designate during a room-by-room renovation, we really wound up with two renovation spaces and two chaos ones.  We are trying to keep the existing bedroom as chaos-free as possible.

The Doors

With this reconfiguration, I really had a lot to consider with the doorways into the bedroom.  Fitting two doors into this room along one wall under the structural beam really is the only way to make it work.  Unfortunately, there is no good way to move electrical around for swing doors into the bedroom.  I’m either replicating the door problem we had upstairs with the door opening into the room, or blocking the light switch with the door opening along the wall.  It’s also such a small room, that floor space is a premium. 

Our solution: Over the years I’ve found two short doors that will fit under the beam and match each other nicely.  With some minor modification, and a lot of paint stripping, I’m turning these into pocket doors.  The pockets will essentially overlap, so both doors can open at the same time.  These will take up none of the essential floor space while still providing plenty of privacy.

One door required a significant amount of paint removal, which I worked on with a combination of techniques to prevent any lead paint dust from causing problems in our home.  Mostly, I used CitriStrip to lift paint from the door, and scrapers to remove it completely.  After a little light sanding, it’s ready for finishing and hanging.