It's a Jungle Up There!

Baby boy Seth. The Chubb. Chubbins. Chubbers. He's a big boy- not over the top, but definitely solid. His room, the other attic bedroom, is just about finished... well, enough that he can sleep in there now and not with his sister. The only problem with that is is that it cuts down on the time available to work on it... in other words, when it's a rainy Saturday or Sunday morning (who wants to work outside in the rain, anyway?).... only one of the many troubles of renovating with kids!

When we moved in just over a year ago, we knew that his room would need almost as much work as Ella's did. There was plywood on all the walls, a dropped ceiling in the closet, a hole in the floor where a cabinet once stood that had plumbing (if anyone knows why that would be, please let us know!) that we used to bring up new electrical, wallpaper over the plywood, and of course- like all the trim and doors throughout the house- latex paint over oil paint.


So began the demolition! The best part! Off came the 12" squares of wood on the ceiling! Down came the wallpaper covered plywood walls! Out came the closet!


After the room was cleared out, the drywall was put up. We used 3/8" drywall because there was tongue and groove underneath the plywood, and cedar sheathing on 1/2 of a wall. The ceiling was also tongue and groove, but this we left because we thought it would look cool in Chubb's jungle room. When the closet was removed, exposing the chimney, it turned out there wasn't any t&g on the ceiling. Derek salvaged some t&g from the closet walls and painstakingly nailed them up on the ceiling. With the drywall up, so began the fight with the mudding and taping. I guess we must have learned from our mistakes because there is a huge difference between the mudding in Ella's and in Seth's room. Just imagine how great we'll be on the next room....



Derek took off the moldings around the door and window, stripped, sanded and stained them. We primed and painted the ceiling in Behr "Wooden Cabin", the walls in "Grass Cloth", and the leaves in "Grape Leaves". I gotta tell you, the Grass Cloth is such a beautiful green... Seth's window faces west and gets amazing evening sun and it lights up that green and makes it sort of glow... ahhh. I also used some of the brown for the trunks of the trees, and some other browns and greens that I had on hand. There is still another layer of foliage, and bugs and animals to paint in, but it's coming along pretty good so far... it really does look like a ranger's cabin in the rainforest.


Now, because of the hole in the floor, and because of how my Dad and he did the wiring, Derek is going to build a built-in cabinet/bookshelf where the closet wall once stood. When we first moved in, we weren't exactly sure of how we were going to do his room, and thought we'd keep the closet, but after we exposed the chimney it looked too cool to cover back up, even with the big messy patch on it. It won't be a solid backed cabinet at the top half of it because we want the light to get to that corner of the room.