Office Ceiling - Part 4

Took a couple pictures of the office ceiling because it is sunny today!  It's so nice in here -- I have the ceiling light on, out of habit, but I hardly need to because the sunlight carries all through the room.

To the East...

To the West...

Lovely, sunny room! 

Office Ceiling - Part 3

Since I didn't post these last weekend, here are my last "progress" pictures and the finished product.

First, here's the scary scaffolding contraption that K put up over the staircase...  It was really stable, since it was resting on a wall, but it was scary to look down!

What a great girl I have!  She's almost finished... 

And now.... the finished ceiling.  I did take these pictures at night, so I'll need to take some during the day, too, because it looks totally different.  The light really shines off of the paint and reflects all over.

To the East...

And to the West...

I'm really happy with it, and I'm so glad I did it.  It's much easier to work on anything in this room, even in the dark evening winter hours.  And during the day it's just beautiful.

Big, Big Weekend!!

A couple big things happened this weekend...

#1 - K got the ceiling above my stairs painted, with the scaffolding on a ladder, high above the stairs.  So that means...  my office ceiling is officially done!!  Photos to follow, but I need to clean up the room first. 

#2 - K and I got ENGAGED!!!  We've been together for more than 6 years and have been discussing marriage for a while, but even more so once it became legal for us to marry in Minnesota!  K wanted to do formal proposal, and boy, did she...  Huge deal, public, friends and family involved, lots of secret planning, the whole deal.  I was surprised and thrilled!

As excited as we are to legally tie the knot, we would really like to have our celebration in Wisconsin with our families.  We have big families, and we are so incredibly blessed, because we have the support of almost every person in our families.  And a party of that size is going to take some planning, so we will need some more time.  And anyway, everyone is telling us to just enjoy being engaged for a while.  So that's what I'm hoping to do!

Here's my ring!  Vintage, 1920s...

Painting My Office Ceiling - Part 2

Got quite a bit of progress done lately on painting my office ceiling...  Which is good because I can't wait to get my office back-- it's a mess!

Here's one photo of the result.  I'm really glad that I left the strips of trim unpainted.  They tie in with the walls really nicely, I think. 

Painting My Office Ceiling - Part 1

Here's the thing with this office--  The wood in here is beautiful.  Even with a thousand staples and nails in the walls and ceiling, it's still so pretty.  The color is warm, golden, and I love how the sunlight looks in here.  But the wood just sucks up any bit of light.  The one ceiling fixture only illuminates the middle of the room, even though it has three bulbs.  I have two other lamps and two other hanging lights elsewhere in the room, and when they're all on it's OK in here.  But it's still difficult to do any art or sewing projects with the light that's here, and I want this room to be more functional.

I have gone back and forth a hundred times on whether or not to paint the ceiling in here.  And if so, which parts?  Just the middle, or the sides, too?  Or leave it as it is-- pretty honey-colored paneling that matches the knotty pine walls...   Once daylight-savings came this fall, I really got my answer.  There is NEVER enough light in here.  If I want there to be more light, I need to paint the ceiling.  I won't touch the knotty pine walls, but I need some white on the ceiling to help the light reflect through the room better.

Since the test primer stuck really well, I got started on painting the ceiling today.  It's late and I'm too tired to continue, and... I'm almost done.  There are a couple areas that are tough to get to, because I didn't move my stuff far enough away.  And the ceiling over the staircase is going to require some creative ladder-ing.  K will get some ladders set up for me later so that I can do that part.

Taping and plastic everywhere, and lots of painting by hand....  I'm trying to leave the two strips of trim unpainted, so there are all those edges to paint carefully. 

There were also quite a few things that needed to be removed from the ceiling before I could paint...
The first thing I did right away last year after we got the house -- there were about a thousand staples and pushpins and nails that needed to be removed from the walls and ceiling.  The previous tenants had obviously papered every surface in here.

Staples with tiny bits of paper...  Everywhere.

Then there were the letter stickers on the wall and ceiling.  Brilliant gems such as "Jazzer Size," "Fun Wasp Life," "Oops I Pooped," and "Golly G."  Actually, I think it's funny that I didn't take those off until now!  I guess I just got used to seeing them.

And the last thing were these mirror circles, stuck on the slope of the wall.  I didn't mind seeing them, and they actually reflected light from one of my lamps.  But after prying them off the wall, I want to kill whoever put them up there!  The adhesive has gotten SUPER sticky, and I'm pretty sure I've lost a layer of skin to the back of these things.  And I sliced my index finger with my razor scraper when I was trying to pry off a circle.  Not all of the glue came off the wall, but luckily the primer covered it up pretty well.

EVIL glue behind those mirrors!

The priming went really well, though.  I'm using a low-VOC oil-based primer, some that K had in the house already.  It's sticking very well, and covering everything I hoped it would -- there were random paint and marks in quite a few places.

I can't wait to be done with this project, because my room is a mess.  And I'm anxious to see what it will look like.  With just the flat primer, there's already a huge improvement in the light in here!

And K's been working all evening on shelving in the basement storage room.  She's re-using a bunch of the wood from the old work-bench.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Hanging Bar For My "Closet"

K and I both have the smaller single door-sized closets in our bedroom, but we both keep the bulk of our clothes in our offices, and just keep the off-season or dress-up stuff in the bedroom.  My work clothes & everyday clothes are up in my office.  This is nice because we are sometimes getting ready for work at different times, so we don't have to wake the other up.  And our bedroom doesn't have a dresser in it!  It can be uncluttered by our clothing messes, and just contains our bed and two nightstands.

So for the purpose of holding my clothes in my office, I purchased a rolling clothes-hanging thing from Target for 20 or 30 bucks.  Mostly plastic, and after a few months the thing developed a definite lean...  It occasionally falls over, basically.  We had to flip it around and lean it toward the corner of the room so it would lean into the wall, and not fall over when I wasn't even near it. 

Leaning line of clothes...

I've been asking K to put in a permanent hanging bar for me, ever since this thing started tipping over.  But it's tricky, because of the sloped walls in my office.  There isn't a normal bracket for putting up a closet rod that works on a sloped wall.  I did find something online for this purpose, but it was spendy.

While at the Depot yesterday, we grabbed the normal brackets and rod, and K figured she could put triangle-shaped blocks behind the brackets to put them in the right position.  But then something made her think of galvanized pipes!  So we went to that aisle and had fun figuring out how we could use a galvanized pipe and pipe fittings to make a hanging rod.

One 3/4"x 4-foot pipe + 2 flanges + 1 45-degree elbow = the perfect piece to attach to the sloped ceiling and the normal wall at the end of the room.

K attached the flanges to the studs and tested the bar by hanging on it a bit.  It stayed secure!  Should be able to hold lots of clothes.

So, this works great!  I have more room for hangers than I had before.  And the bar certainly isn't going anywhere.

Space on the left could be used for shoes!

It does stick out more into the room than my portable bar did, but we had to put the bar where the wall studs were, and not just wherever it looked good.  The space behind the clothes seemed like it would be wasted, at first, but I realized that I could set up some nice shoe racks back there.  Or maybe shoe cubbies, and then I could put hats and boxes of accessories on top of those. 

New Office Floor - Day 2 & 3

Took K a couple more days to get the laminate flooring installed in her office.  Of course, she had to hurry up, so she could get her desk and stuff back in there and get back to work! 

Here's the finished floor.  Not bad for FREE! 

New Office Floor - Day 1

Last week, K found a great deal on Craigslist.  She often looks through the listings of free items to see if there are building materials she might want. 

The big score last week was approximately 450 square feet of laminate bamboo-look flooring.  Which had retailed for more than $1000 and had only been used for 3 years.  In a yoga studio.
Which means it was cleaned gently and often.  Shoes were not worn on it, pretty much ever.  And it included an expensive and cushy underlayment.

The flooring was free if you came in and UN-installed it for the building owner.  Which K did, and about 3 hours later we had a big pile of flooring under our kitchen table (including 2 unopened boxes that were in storage.)

Kristy removed some of the linoleum tiles that were loose, then installed the underlayer and started with the lengths of laminate.

Leftover tiles and cement with glue

Mallet-ing, mallet-ing...

Eventually, K had to call it a night.  Finishing the floor and adding the floor trim will have to wait for tomorrow.

Side note: Friday night was K's birthday party, and our friend was in our kitchen and said, "Where did you get that flooring...?"  Turned out it was from the studio she had worked at for years!  She had cleaned that floor probably a hundred times!  Hilarious!  What a small city...