It's that time of year again, Back to School! While I am watching all the supply lists come out and shelves empty I contemplate what we need to do to finish our classroom. Last year we renovated our playroom/classroom to be nicer but also include a temporary office while our college student uses the original office.
This is what the room looked like before we renovated...
The first year, actually first few weeks, we moved into the house we had severe flash flooding. The rain filled our window well and poured in. I just remember being pregnant and overwhelmed. But we did some landscape work and it has been 4 years since that happened and no further issues so we decided to finally tackle this room!
We started by cleaning out the room, removing all the electrical plates and ceiling tiles. My youngest decorated the room the year before by adding his hand prints. We plan to actually keep a few and frame them.
This room was constructed out of metal, vinyl, and cedar planks. They had the water shutoff and pressure valve in here but neither worked very well. Our plan is to relocate the valves to be closer together and have the ability to conceal them.
Time for the real fun! Finished taking out the drop down ceiling which gave us an extra 2-4 inches ofceiling height. Instead of florescent lighting we plan to put in recessed lighting, again to give us more height.
Then the walls came down! We are saving the wood to either sell or use for our front porch. We have a few ideas and with it being cedar in good condition we know it is not scrap yard worthy.
Recessed lighting installed along with more electrical outlets. There were only 3 outlets before and not very safe. Making this into our office we needed more outlets, so we now have 6!
It was not easy but the plumbing has now been upgraded and we can access it so much easier. On top of that it actually shuts off instead of allowing a trickle through.
Just to make sure we did not have any water issues we filled all cracks and then waterproofed the concrete walls. There were only a few hairline cracks and as you can see in previous pictures the walls had been exposed for several years and never had issues but for reassurance we wanted to take every precaution possible.
After we waterproofed the wall we added plastic vapor barrier too. Again to add as protect against any moisture especially since we added insulation we wanted to keep a barrier between the concrete and the batting. Then framing finally began. It was a bit tricky with our wall anchors (used to stabilize the wall) and the water shutoff but we got it done!
Drywall makes a huge difference, you can really see the room starting to take shape. It is also at this point I get a little restless and want to finish it but of course there is the mudding and letting it dry...
And repeat, until it is all smooth.
With all the extra ends of lumber we cut off I decided to let the boys have them. Everytime they heard the saw they would end up running in (after we were done with the cut) and taking the leftover pieces.
Excitement ensued once my husband gave me the go ahead to dust down the walls and begin painting, eeek!
I chose a yellow "sunflower" for the accent wall. Our plan is to have a built in desk along this wall to help break up the brightness.
And a lighter neutral gray for the rest of the walls Glidden Pebble Grey. The boys also got involved in painting, even "our" 21 year old.
I still find it amazing the difference that a 2nd coat makes.
Wall and ceiling painting completed!
Next up Flooring!
We chose to go with a laminate flooring so we could lay it over the existing vinyl flooring. With it being our playroom and schoolroom we wanted something durable and easy to clean yet inexpensive so if we needed to change it out later we could...This actually turns out to be a good and bad idea.
We laid the flooring and put in the built-in desk and all of the toys, basically everything was done except hanging things on the walls when we had major flash flooding. I didn't even have time to take pictures. We literally finished the day before and the next day we had rain that came so quick that streams were rising 6 inches every 30 minutes. Our window well filled and water rushed in :( We were up until 3am ripping up the floor (we were able to save it, just not the underlayment), taking out any wet drywall, and continuing to use a portable sump pump in our window well. Last fall we had quite a few flash floods and we couldn't get outside to work with the yard to do a permanent fix. As soon as the yard dried up enough it became to cold dig. The spring hasn't been much better but we have been able to do temporary fixes until we can get to it, hopefully within the next month or two.
Tomorrow I'll post what the room looked like after we redid the floors and 2 walls...
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