Attic Rehab Part 1: The Gut

It didn’t start as a total gut rehab, but when does it? At some point in late September before this all started, the phrase “about 2 weeks” was bandied about. 2 weeks of mess and chaos is too many for me, but I figured I’d survive. I’m sure my husband doesn’t remember saying 2 weeks, perhaps I really did imagine it was supposed to be that quick, but for now it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, even if it was 3 weeks, or 2 months, that was September and it’s oh, about 4 months later, and counting. Well, let’s back up a bit before I move on.

At some point in early September we had an energy audit company come out and look at the house. We had gotten tired of $400+ gas bills when our house was never over 70 degrees even in the dead of winter. Turns out, we had no insulation, anywhere, none, ZERO. Something like 82% of the heat in our house was escaping through the roof and walls. E-I-G-H-T-Y-T-W-O. It’s supposed to be something like 30% or less. Much of it went right through the roof, and up there was my favorite room in the house, my craft attic. So at that point I looked at my gorgeous (cough, cough) lavender walls, adhesive glow in the dark stars on the purple ceiling, cheap trim that hid bad drywall seams and awful, painted linoleum flooring and decided it was time for a change. If we had to tear out the walls to properly add insulation anyway, we might as well gut it and upgrade my craft space.  Here it is in all its glory in case you forgot, not too shabby!

It was a fairly large craft room at 14 x 24, but hey, figured I could tweak the floor plan and break 500 sq. ft. in my new and improved craft room! I don’t need anything too extravagant, but fresh paint and some new lights would be really nice. He he, what a fool I was for almost settling for that.

You’ve probably seen this post, the one where I showed off the before and after pictures of the initial gut job. Figured paying a friend to do it would be cheaper and less worrisome than paying strangers and it was. It was quite a mess, but we figured once the insulation was done, we could clear out the debris, put up new drywall and I’d be up and scrap-booking again in no time. We could slowly finish the craft room around me, and deal with new flooring, painting, etc. at a later date as we found time and money to do so. I just wanted back in there by Christmas so I could attempt to make some presents.

First major hurdle: Turns out 100 year old prairie houses require far more complicated insulation than we could do ourselves. The husband did some research and found a local company to handle some bids. The company we chose to do the insulation had been recommended, were less expensive than a few others we considered, and we had a budget to consider so we took a chance. This was before Thanksgiving. 6 weeks later they were still tap-dancing around getting us scheduled and now we were looking at early January, I was concerned. It was only a 2 day job, so there was that, but the week of January 9^th was the soonest they could fit us in. ARRRGGGHH! I decided after Christmas to stop being upset about it since it wouldn't make it be finished any sooner.  I then postponed my craft-room-reconstruction-sabbatical for a bit so that it would coincide with it actually being ready for me to work on. I’ve tried to take the new approach of “it’s about the journey and not the destination” about a lot of things, and it has certainly been helping my outlook.

We bought the house knowing its age would complicate everything and OH BOY has it. Second hurdle: We needed a special, very expensive type of insulation, which needed deeper eaves so we had to bring in carpenters for that. Thankfully the management company we hired to watch over the insulation company was able to find used foam insulation boards that were still very much usable and much less expensive. Yay for something positive! It more than covered the additional cost of having the management company to begin with. Then the pour-in insulation density required was an issue. Third hurdle: Their trial-run blew out several sections of the plaster wall in one of the closets, and they had to stop and change to a lower density insulation.

No more blow-outs, but at this point I think we were at day 3 or 4 (of the 2 days project). Not to mention they didn’t bid wall repairs, so now we have to add some major plaster replacement to our repair list. GAH! At least it was fixed bid, so we got a seriously good price and every extra hour they had to work because of their miscalculations came out of THEIR pocket. The management company re-inspected things constantly to make sure it was done right, which made me feel better, but also meant some rework and extra time on the back-end. In total it was 8 working days spread over 4 weeks, and on Feb 1^st it was finally done. Yeah, almost 4 months later.  We are much warmer, and hopefully my gas bill will be nice and low next month, but I still as yet had no craft room…  Instead I had this:

Now, once I embraced the idea of just going with the flow, I started making big plans to assuage my anxiety, BIG plans! I certainly had enough time while the room was getting done <insert mad cackling here>. It might not be completely finished until Summer (when you see my plans you will understand why), but it should be at least usable again by the end of February. No pics of the grand plans to share yet, as most of it is in a scrapbook with ideas torn out of magazines, but we decided to go with a VERY open floor plan. I’ll actually post again soon with more details on how we hope the attic will look when we are finished…

I started a 2 week, unpaid sabbatical Monday, the idea being that a LOT of the bigger jobs can get started and possibly finished when I have long, uninterrupted days to work on them.  When I go back to work on the 19th, I can knock out some of the small finishing stuff in small bites while during the day someone else works on it for me. You’ll soon learn why I love my friend Dinah so much.  My husband has been amazing throughout the process, doing all of the electrical himself as well as helping me along the way with advice, ideas, and a steady supply of tools. I have also hired a very good friend (Dinah) to help me, since a) I can’t do a lot of it without a second pair of hands, and b) she has more experience with stuff like mudding walls, painting, light construction, etc. I figure between the two of us, we can probably knock out clearing the attic, putting down the snap-together bamboo flooring, and patching the 70 holes left in every room of the house from the insulation job before I go back to work. Holes might not be doing the situation justice, here you go, feast your eyes on this and imagine them in EVERY ROOM OF YOUR HOUSE and keep in mind loose cotton fiber insulation is constantly seeping out of them and landing on every surface:

Serenity now!! 

Then hopefully by the time the flooring gets laid, my husband and I can get drywall up soon after that. This has already been an epic post, so I’ll leave the details of what we plan to do next to another one… but here is a preview of the progress we’ve made in the past 2 days alone:

My Craft Room... OK, So it’s More of a Crazy Craft Attic

Now I won’t pretend that I have ALL the answers when it comes to thriftiness, but I am pretty good at finding deals.  On the one hand, a part of me wants my craft room to be organized to a fault, always looking like the magazines with fancy, expensive Martha Stewart Craft furniture (it’s a thing, I have seen it). But that ain’t real life is it?  The minute I start a new project it looks like a tornado went through the place and all that matters is a) being able to find what I need and b) not worrying about spilling glue/paint/glitter/etc. all over the furniture I have up there.  I also would rather spend my money on craft supplies and not fancy furniture that is likely to get burned by my cheap hot gloue gun and bedazzled with cheap acrylic paint spills.

So, let’s get down to business.  When we bought this house, I saw the awful purple nightmare of an attic and thought “GIRL CAVE!!”  a.k.a. “Craft room!” a.k.a. “OMG Craft Attic”. It’s about 15 feet wide, and 30 feet long.  Here is a pic (cameo by Mr. Crafty Diva Wannabe):

 

Eventually it’s gonna get painted, but life gets in the way and even nasty purple walls and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling can’t stop this woman from her crafts! Moving right along, it looks like this now:

Much better right? And you know what? Cost FAR less than you think to get that way (not counting the craft supplies themselves.)  Some of it is new, some of it was just creative re-use.

The huge table in the middle is a workshop table we salvaged from the basement ($0) on top of 2 Ikea adjustable saw horses ($40). The White table/chairs on the right is a Pottery Barn bistro set we brought from the previous place that we had got on Craigslist 4 years ago for $100. We were going to get rid of it, but it’s a cute place to craft so I decided to keep it (I’m calling that $0).  Every bit of cabinetry and shelving in the room was left in various rooms of the house when we bought it so we just brought it all upstairs($0). I nabbed a couple of nice wooden folding chairs at a thrift store ($12). I then picked up 4 more folding tables and a 2 more chairs at Home Depot ($90).  The blue rug was there, the flowered rug came from CraigsList 7 years ago and moved from our previous place too ($0).  So for under $150 in NEW furniture, I have room to hold 8-9 crafty women.  5 if people need to spread out a bit and do something big like scrapbooking.  

Of course, I don’t even want to think about how much I’ve spend on craft supplies, or all the stuff to organize those supplies, but I did some cool, cheap things there too.  But that’s another post. Hope you enjoyed this one! And if you live nearby and wanna craft sometime, I have plenty of space, LOL.

Spray Paint is my Friend

When I was little, I remember my mom having a LOT of spray paint. Any time she wanted to refresh a room, make something old new and shiny, she’d whip out her spray paint and *poof!  We didn’t have a lot of money to be buying new furniture every few years, but it was amazing what she could do with a fresh coat of paint and some new rugs.  I remember doing that with an old bedside stand. I must have spray painted it 7 or 8 times.  I had forgotten about that. I was reminded recently while reading this great DIY mercury glass pumpkin tutorial by someone I met briefly at BlogHer 2011 this summer.  It made me remember how much I loved making something old, new again with a $4 can of paint. 

It occurred to me that I have LOTS of stuff in the garage and basement that is cute, but was from my “everything white and sunflowers days” and doesn’t fit the darker new house, or it’s prairie style.  Then I went “DUH!” and smacked myself in the forehead, I can fix that with SPRAY PAINT! It can be any color I want.

Maybe using spray paint on old stuff rather than paying out the nose for fancy new stuff is pedestrian, but it’s me.  Yes, I have a job, I work for Microsoft, and I get paid very well for what I do.  But it’s the principal of it.  Why throw things away, why WASTE all the money I make?  It’s also fun to turn something meh into something awesome! If it’s something you think is lame, or cheap, or too pedestrian then my blog isn’t for you so I’m warning you right now… 

Anyway, I’m not ready to share any of my big projects yet, nothing feels quite polished enough to post yet. But here is a quick DIY makeover you might find surprisingly fun.  Now I’m new to this who DIY blogging thing so bear with me… I didn’t always remember to take before pictures, boo. It’ll get better as I learn. So here is some “before” images of OK things that definitely needed a Halloween makeover.

Cute wire basket I got at a fabulous little 2nd hand store (if you live near me please visit them, the place is awesome!) for about $7. Cream colored, good shape, not really a good color for me but it had *potential*.

Cream colored pumpkin from Michael’s Arts & Crafts.  Normally these go for about $13, but with a 50% off sale, and a 20% off friends & family coupon, I scored it for about $5.50.  I grabbed a few in black, and some smaller ones ($4 after coupon) too while I had the great discount going on.  As is, they look fake and kinda cheesy.  If it’s gonna look fake let’s have it look COOL and fake!

Lastly I had a simple, clear vase that came with some lovely flowers from a good friend.  Probably wouldn’t use it again as-is, but hmm, maybe in a Halloween display in another color? No picture, but you’ll recognize it as familiar when you see it.

I removed tags, didn’t bother cleaning anything too well because “HELLO, HALLOWEEN”, and grabbed some spray paints that I nabbed on sale at Home Depot for about $4.25 each.  I picked up black and orange, but also found the hammered pewter and shiny metallic black pretty interesting.  They both looked even better than I had hoped. The hammered pewter has a liquid quality to it that’s very cool!

Aaaaaand :: drum roll:: Voila!  A few more items to incorporate into my Halloween displays in far more appealing colors. 

Stay tuned to see how I was inspired by a Pottery Barn store display to create a fabulous little dining room table scene for a fraction of the cost, using the items above.