Movin' on up

In order to make up for my extended absence, I've got a special treat for you all.

I don't believe that you and my second story have ever met.  After the disastrous pre-blog roof leak of 2011, the subsequent lack of access for cleaning, and the furniture hoarding (Oh, all the furniture hoarding...), it was looking quite the mess up there.

The room pretty much became a dusty, musty dumping ground for everything that I'd pulled out of alleys/dumpsters or found at estate sales and didn't have a place for.  1940's homes don't have the storage required for modern living, much less the life of a furniture hoarding freak, so there simply wasn't anywhere else to put it except the basement and that was already packed with my non-furniture junk.

This is the way our situation remained until my girlfriend visited last week and finally convinced me to get moving on a project that I'd thought would take years: making the master bedroom a master bedroom.

This required completely reorganizing the basement with new shelving and tidy, labeled containers.  Then came the task of dragging all the pieces that I wished to sell down two narrow, twisted stairways and into the basement, where it would be categorized and out of sight of the living areas.

Phew.

A bit of tidying/arranging and one seriously aggravating set of Home Depot blinds later, everything is looking pretty snazzy.  We've got a real, honest-to-goodness master bedroom now!

 

 Not only is it a real master bedroom, it's a freakin' huge one.  The space is around 50' x 25', so clearing it out was like adding a good sized one bedroom apartment to the home.  Transitioning from the smaller, closed-off rooms of downstairs to the loft-style layout here is quite strange.

The angled ceiling and winding, narrow stairs necessitated some creativity, so we're using deconstructed wall units for storage.

 

The two lounge areas means that there's plenty of options when looking for a spot to sip your morning coffee.

 My teacher girlfriend also enjoys the dining/meeting table.  There's plenty of space to spread out all of those lesson plans.

There's also double walk-in closets, a rarity in a home this age, and a small dressing area.

So there you have it.  Many tasks remain (wiring in more plugs, fixing water-damaged drywall, various decorating bits), but I'm very pleased with the results.  Now it's time for a well-deserved post-project nap.