I’m Cleaning Out My Closet

Yes siree bob we’re channeling a little bit of Eminem circa 2002 with his single “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” as we’re cleanin’ out our closet.  Any Marshall Mathers fans out there?  This one is for you (and also for those who have no idea of the song we speak of).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, back to the point of this post.  We’re cleaning out our closet!  But more importantly, let’s discuss the why.  We’ve officially decided to renovate both our guest bedroom (that we use as a personal walk in closet) and our master bedroom.  And by renovate we mean remove the old horse hair plaster and lathe, insulate, and essentially start from scratch.  I know!  It’s like whoa!  But let’s get right down to it.  We knew we wanted to do this from the second we moved into our home, thus why the master bedroom still looks like this:

FYI…the trim in this room is plastic!  And another shot (don’t you love my night stand circa 1998…oh to be a high school freshman again):

And one last shot of the closet area:

And then there’s the guest bedroom which we have’t done a single thing to in over two years:

And another shot.  Don’t you love that wallpaper?

And one more shot:

In the grand scheme of things, renovating these two rooms was always in the plan for the spring of 2012.  We have a schedule mapped out for major projects which coincides with our town’s free dump week.  We take FULL advantage of free dump week being the cheapos that we are.  Anything to save a buck!  In 2010 the major project involved gutting out and re-doing the bathroom and craft room.  In 2011, it was a full-on gut job of the dining room (which Colby tackled solo while I was gallivanting around Russia.  Thus, we’re tackling the remaining bedrooms in 2012 (leaving the living rooms for 2013 and the kitchen for 2014).

Why are we deciding to gut out the rooms?  Why not just peel the wallpaper/remove the paneling and skim coat the walls?  We did have great success with that in the living room and the parlor but it’s not our smartest move.  You see, we have a bit of an insulation problem in these rooms.  Meaning, some walls completely lack it.  Hello wasted heating oil!  And since we live in Maine, wasted heating oil equals big bucks.  We figure, in the long run, spending the extra time and money to remove the old construction materials, reinsulate, and finish everything is worth it.  So we’re cleaning out our closet.

And getting ready for demo days (which by the way was this past weekend).  Not only did we have to clean out our guest room but our master bedroom had to be moved too.

Now remember, we live in a tiny home where we utilize every square inch.  Take away two bedrooms, which is half of the second floor, and it’s a tight fit.  The game plan:  move the craft room stuff downstairs and move the bedroom stuff into the craft room.  So we cleaned out the craft room.

And started to move in:

Note the contents of our old master bedroom closet that we jammed under the bed strategically.  Things we don’t use as often are under there.  Fingers crossed we don’t need anything there for a few weeks!

It’s crazy seeing our guest room empty.  So odd!  I can almost envision what this room will soon be like when it’s actually setup for guests!  What a novel idea…a guest room for guests not for shirts and pants!

Oh…and check this out.  There are seriously about five layers of wallpaper in this room.

Good thing we chose not to peel the paper and skim coat the plaster walls.  That would have been a doozy of a project!  Just peeling the wallpaper would leave the walls very damaged.  The walls would need some serious muddin’ lovin’ care!

We managed to cram just about everything into the craft room, including our queen sized bed, a shelf full of clothes, one dresser, and one nightstand.

It’s a tight fit.  I have to scoot down past the end of the bed and climb over Colby and his gargantuan feet when I try to go to bed at night.

We couldn’t quite fit everything in the room, despite our best efforts to donate everything old and unused to Salvation Army, so we spilled into the bathroom.

It’s so strange to have my sock drawer and belts in the bathroom.  I still can’t get used to it even though we’ve lived like this for almost a week.  And then there’s the new kitchen lounge.

And of course we started the kitchen closet project just days before we were scheduled to demolish the bedrooms, knowing perfectly well that we wouldn’t be able to finish it.  Meaning, kitchen closet mess is currently living in the parlor.  Doh!  Along with Colby’s jeans.

There’s alot of running around in our underwear going on in our house right now.  Be sure to knock when you come over!  And even the living room is all kinds of chaotic.

Did you notice the couch switcheroo?  The craft room couch is in the living room and the living room couch (aka Goose’s bed) is in the kitchen.  And the craft room shelves also found a new home in the living room.

I feel like I’m living in a war zone.  Every single room in our house is completely disrupted.  The bedrooms are torn apart…literally, laundry has thrown up all over the house, crafts are in weird spots, there’s a nightstand in the kitchen, Goose’s real bed is under the bathroom vanity, and I still can’t remember where my socks are!  But I just keep telling myself it’s temporary and we have big, BIG plans for our two new bedrooms.  Big plans!  Which I can’t wait to show you!  I’m whipping up mood boards for you all as we speak…errrr…type.  But first, there’s demo to be done!  To be continued!

Pssst…So the demo is officially done and boy was that a doozy!  Be sure to tune in tomorrow to catch the highlights of the mass destruction that went down in our house this weekend!  Let’s just say we’re exhausted!  But enough about me, what have you all been up to?  Anyone have some renovation horror stories?  Or have not so patiently lived in close quarters waiting out their renovation?  Any awesome ideas on how to control dust?  So much dust everywhere!