Last Wall Papered Room Down!!

Here’s a peak at a current project we’re working on.  For the last month we’ve been working on putting a closet back into our 2nd bedroom after we removed it to make our closet bigger.  Here’s the layout plan for the two rooms and what it first looked like when we moved in.

And here’s what the room looked like when we started.  The bed used to be on the wallpaper wall (and will go back there) but we had moved the furniture around so I could remove the wallpaper.

Some one took a lot of time to make sure those drapes lined up with the wallpaper but it was time for it to go!!  Just like the kitchen, dining room, and hall bathroom it look very little time to actually strip the walls. Then I had to remove all the drapes and shades so we could start filing the holes.

While I was working on that Mace was working on removing the heater fins from the base board. We had taped out the space for the closet MONTHS before (yea the wedding kinda put things on hold for a bit!) so we knew about how far back we needed to cut them back. You can see the fins were pretty far in front of the blue tape.

Mace used his metal snip tool to cut a bunch of fins at once and then remove them, they are kind of like an accordion.

And here’s the after.

Then we needed to remove the metal heater backing so Mace could get the new wall stud flush against the wall and then build a box around heat pipe. Out came the level so he knew the right place to cut and where the wall would be. Removing the backing was tricky because you don’t want to damage or cut into the pipe heater. It was pretty time consuming b/c his blade on the dremel blade was pretty dull but eventually he got it.

We had just enough clearance by the window sill to make the closet 23-3/4″ deep (excluding the drywall depth) and not have the drywall touch the sill (which Mace doesn’t like).

And then it was onto the fun stuff for Mace, framing!! We had been worried about the closet jutting too much into the room and weird sight lines but with the frame in place we felt confident that it blended in well and was the right size (standard 6ft) so you didn’t walk into it when you open the door.  Plus we didn’t have to move the outlet. By the end of day one we had made some serious progress in the room!