Bedroom Redo #1

The very first time we looked at our house as it sat vacant we could see the ceiling of the 3rd bedroom was on floor from water damage. This was pretty much the only thing we could see in the house with the blinds all down. I remember telling Wendy, "this isn't going to work". The next time I saw this room was when the neighbors gave us a heads up that "Gene" was in town and working on the house. We drove over and had our first chat with Gene, he was mowing the lawn.

Our conversation went something like:

Us: "Hey, cool house, do you wanna sell it?"

Gene: "Umm its not ready to sell."

Us: "It was on the market a year ago, and has sat vacant ever since"

Gene: "Umm yeah, I don't live here any more"

Us: "Can we have a tour?"

The tour revealed a few things that were mysterious from only an exterior view. One, the house had been Gene's personal ashtray since he'd been back. Two, the reasoning for the low windows in front is because of the stairs. Finally, the reason the ceiling was on the floor in said bedroom is because Gene didn't install the refrigerator icemaker water line correctly in the kitchen above. In its year of vacancy, this leak led to the collapsed ceiling. At the time of our tour, Gene was "gene-ing-it-up" smattering layers of drywall and mud into the irregular collapse. It was a mess.

Fast forward to us living in the house for 8 months, a baby due in two months and we're using the only livable bedroom of three. Beyond Gene's icemaker madness, we also discovered a downspout leak unknown to us. The cat alerted me to it when he was messing with the bubbly plaster by the side window. Basically the water was draining down the brick instead of the downspout. Ten contractor bags of demolition later, I had removed the rot. Our house has no insulation, the exterior walls are built of brick, then 4" block, furring, and plaster.

To make a boring story short, we infilled the wall with a little drywall & actual plaster and replaced part of the over the course of a couple weeks with the help of my uncle, a plaster craftsman. We installed some Ikea flooring, replaced all the trim, closet shelving, and painted the room white. We bought the white Izaac Mizrahi Target furniture on the clearance cheap (2 nightstands, 2 dressers), who knows it might be a collectible item in 30 years. I made the bed in college. We hung the Charlie Harper 'Skipping School' print and called it a wrap. After all was said and done, we actually got two nights to sleep in our new room before Ava was born.