The Hall and 5th Bedroom

There are some pictures of the demolition if you care to check them out on the demolition page. This is the last of the construction. After this the house is completely finished! It has been a long time coming but the final stage was the down stairs hall and the 5th bedroom. The bedroom is really small, only 7'x11' once finished. Before it had no closet so it couldn't really be called a bedroom. We use it as a den/computer room. But a bed will fit and it wouldn't be too crouded. Wonderful for a baby or younger child.

The Before Look

The hall was rather crouded. The washer and dryer stuck out into the hall just a bit at the North end and the door into the den opened into the hall. The den was fairly roomy but had a lot of wasted space with the door right in the middle of the wall. The light switch for the room was out in the hall but not by the door. Go figure. There was no light in the hall. We had a small light plugged in at the washer plug and just hung on the wall. Not very usefull.

The After Look

We did a lot of work to make this turn out nice. May seem silly but we moved the washer/dryer down South by one foot. This made the connectors on the back slide under the stairs and we could get a few inches more room in front. By sliding them down we also got a little room at the North end for storage of our cleaning items and laundry soap.

The blue lines in the drawing above are sliding or folding doors. We now have a coat closet in the hall. Something we really needed. The folding doors on the closet are 24" but only come into the hall about 11" so they don't take up too much room. The washer/dryer are now hidden behind two sets of 36" folding doors. This makes the hall look much nicer and can reduce the noise when doing laundry. We added a closet to the den which makes it a bedroom. There are sliding doors on that closet. You may notice a new pocket door at the North end of the hall. This closes the hall off from the living room. When entertaining or watching TV, this will be very nice in added noise reduction from the laundry if needed.

Below you can see some pictures we took during the process of construction. These changes really made the house more livable and comfortable.

Suprisingly, the installation of the walls was a bit harder than expected in the washer/dryer area. The rest went just as expected. Nice and easy. Once the walls were in place, running the new electrical was a snap. Installing all of the plugs and switches at the end of the new electrical wire was a bit of a pain. Just time consuming but not bad. Next is the hanging of the sheet rock.

Hanging sheetrock took all day long. There were a lot of small cuts in the closets such as the end caps that wrap the openings and the headers on the inside and outside just above the doors. Over the washer/dryer, we had to hang a new ceiling sheet because of some ugly exposed ceiling joistss that were exposed during the demolition. Once the sheet rock was put up over the top of the electrical areas we cut out the switches, plugs, and best of all the new hall lights. (only one light shown above both shown in the finished pictures below)

After taping off all the edges and covering all the nails we used a rag to dob on joint compound "mud". Then when it started to set for a moment we gently smoothed out the dobs to give a nice large textured pattern to the walls. This helps to hide the mistakes made along the way. It also adds a lot of character to the walls. Finally, the painting started. First a coat of primer then our color. It is hard to tell from the pictures but we used a light orange (almost peach) in the bedroom and a dusty brown (almost tan) in the hall.

All done but the trim. Sorry the end pictures aren't all that great. This cheap digital camera I have really needs a lot of light and it just doesn't get enough with all the hall doors closed. Oh well, you get the idea I am sure... We may be able to save the floor but if not it will get tile squares like the kitchen/dining room. Once every last detail is complete we will take some more pictures.

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