Changing doors

Today I tackled yet another project from the never-ending list.  Maybe 4-5 years ago I found some french doors on kijiji at a town nearby.  They were actual nice old wood ones, so the drive there was worth getting 2 for $50.  When I arrived, he gave me all 3 for $50 - what'd'ya know!?

It meant that I had to find something to do with them though… and "lay them there" in the basement worked until this weekend.  Well, worked until I got my table saw actually!

Only a note away

After these past few weeks, the Music Room is only a note away from being entirely done.  The last thing is to trim a french door to fit, which has to be done with a table saw that I don't own... hmmmm.

BUT, the latest development has been the baseboards on the panelled wall!  Yay!!!  Now the room looks done, even though it isn't in my mind ;)

Over the Christmas holiday I spent some time putting the baseboards back up.  It doesn't seem like a big deal, but they couldn't go back where they came from, as the wall dimensions were changed enough that I had to cut each piece to fit.  And sand them.  And putty and paint them.

Happy 5 Years, Jumanji!

It was 5 years ago today that I moved into this house - taking a bit of a risk doing it on my own, but knowing that it was the right move for me.  I gladly accepted my friend, and her boyfriend, as roommates.  It was their first time living together, but worked out amazingly and now they're married and have gotten their first house, etc.  Once they were preparing to move out, I actually got a job I had been after for 3 years, AND found a new man who became my Hubby.  In an interesting coincidence, the permanent career he secured before we met is just down the road from our house.  Yay!  I guess it was the right house for me... and now us.

Here are a few quick before and after photos about how I've/we've made it our own since I/we settled in.

Summer relaxin'

So, there hasn't been much happening around here.  Well, not by our hands anyways.  We do have a friend, Michael, helping us out with the front garden as we have finally acknowledged that we can't manage both the back and the front.  We're not naturally gardening folk, so Jumanji has been too much for us.  Actually - I did give myself 5 years after moving in here before I'd admit defeat.... August 25th will be the 5th year anniversary!

Check out the latest Jumanji pics!  AND the chandelier that my Dad helped me put up :)

Next on CBC Radio 1....

That's what I'll be hearing a lot of now.  :)

Today marks the day that the Music Room is finally fit for consumption.  And tunes.  And Globe & Mail reading.  Those are a few of GW's plans for his spare moments from now on.

It was such a long time ago that we started the room, but I considered it a bit of an artisan thing instead of a construction thing.  I had the panelled wall, secret passageway and custom bookshelves to build.  I had never built anything before, and wanted something super custom, so patience was also in the recipe here.

Want to see how it looks?

A little more!

I got that mid-level
shelf in for the glassware.

There's GW staining them.
He's really got it mastered! 

And because I needed original
baseboards elsewhere, I took them
from behind where the bookshelves
will be going up.

We also picked up the drawer pulls for the mini drawers.  Thank you, Lee Valley!
Monday - check!

Down to the details

This weekend we took some time to get a couple of the last details moving on the Music Room.

A little more wood-working.  Some live music.  We ordered the chairs (!).  Wheee!

No, we're not done.  BUT... we're still just under the 6 month mark, which I think isn't too bad for this first time carpenter.  So where are we at now?

What's my one rule?

Create a plan... and then redo it from scratch (to see if your mind works it the same way twice). Then do a third plan where you put the best of both plans together.  Then do the math of the plan on an excel spreadsheet.

Plan... and plan... and plan...  So something like this doesn't happen.

If you build it...

When we decided that we wanted to have bookshelves on two walls of the music room, we were pumped to find that Target had a beautiful set of shelves that would work perfectly.  3 straight ones, and 1 for the corner.  Easy!  Well, not really - despite having Target in Canada now, we can't get the corner shelf.  It can only be purchased online... and only delivered to America.  Boo. So, I gallantly told GW that I'd build them myself, and I don't think he took me seriously for a while.  Wrong!

So far it's been easier than expected, and cheaper!  If we were to buy the full set from Target, it would have cost $800.  I've done the frames of 3 of the 4, and only spent $178.  Bam!  We have to get the backing, the trim, the stain and the corner shelf pieces... but I think it can be done for under $3-400.  Not too bad!

How I did it

I'm not going to go into extensive detail, but I wanted to highlight a couple of the things that I felt someone else might need to know before they tried to do their own wall (ahem, Dad... you're next!)

Most importantly, start with a vision of what you want to do.  If you don't imagine it, you can't keep yourself heading towards the end result.

Next, you need to put your vision on paper - I did it a few different times.  Sketching randomly, identifying the challenges, and mentally testing different solutions.

Our "gallery" wall... and one other thing!

THE WALL IS DONE!!!!  (well, almost - baseboard to go, I'll tell you more in a 'big wrap up' post sometime)

Tonight I finished putting together the frames for our gallery wall, which lives on the panelled wall that I've been painstakingly building for a while now.

Wanna see all my hard work?

A little sparkle lights the way!

I was going to title this post "the end is near" but upon writing that, I thought of all I have yet to do... and I figured it was too likely that I'd jinx myself.  The end of the work would never come.

I know you've heard me speak of "Lady-Do" weekends... well, today was Daddy-Do Day! Thankfully m'Pa had some time in his weekend to come out here and help me move a light switch.  You've seen the one... it sits in one of the panels of the wall - kind of randomly?  Not anymore!

Let me tell you a little something

I have to tell you a secret.

Well... it's not really a secret... but a surprise.

It was a surprise to me anyways!

What a colourful world!

I know I've kept 'mum' on the colour we had chosen for the music room/library, but that was only because I wanted to be sure that we had gotten to our final choice before broadcasting it to the world.  And that involved putting it on the wall... something GW got to yesterday!

We first got our idea back in December while at IKEA looking for bookshelves.  We were there for something else, OH - my craft room, but thought we should start the hunt for the music room too.

ANYWAYS....

The hidden door... what door?

The motivation continued, and I'm pleased to say that the hidden door is... well, hidden!! (essentially)

Over the weekend, I got all the trim put into the 'boxes' of our panels.  The last things to do were the panels on the door, and to find some sort of latching system to keep the door closed.  Well, I did both!

Look what I can do!

This weekend I made it my mission to keep going on the wall.  I'm not usually so keen to keep at a project (motivation isn't always at full force), but I'm enjoying this one - likely because of all the lines, the details, and toys :)

Stop me if I've told you this already (well, just skip ahead) but we ran into quite a pickle when we went to choose the trim for finishing inside each of the panel 'boxes'.  The pre-finished panel pieces we got were supposed to be 3/4" deep, and I had found a couple of trims that I thought would look nice.  Wrong.

Putting a new toy to work

A couple of weeks ago we had friends over for dinner, and Amy was good enough to remember that I had mentioned wanting to get a sliding compound mitre saw.  She told me that she had seen one for sale, and I managed to get it over to the store on the last day it would be 40% off.

The following Saturday I spent another couple of hours pouring over my drawing of the panelled wall. Once I was confident I knew what we needed, we went over to Home Depot to grab the wood.  The next step was to find a nail gun, but I didn't want to buy one, so I had to wait until I could borrow one.

Holy Sh*t! It Worked!!!

Seriously... not 1 of the 4 of us here for this adventure actually believed it was going to happen.  And it nearly didn't.  I mean it.  Had we continued on our starting path, and gotten any further than we did, the secret door would have been a sad technical error.

I got the hinges a few days ago, and was very excited about them.  Too excited.  I'd never seen anything so creatively simple, that felt so solid and quality made.  I was so excited, I made a video this morning to show you what they looked like and what they did before we put them into the wall.

Secret Project

Well, overall, it's not so secret.  I've been pretty pumped about this project, so I've been talking about it to anyone who takes an interest or will listen :)  (thanks for those of you that have, by the way, lol)

A friend at work was talking about things that she would have in her dream house, and I said that if she loved the house she was in, she should put those things into her current house... and live the dream.  I might have over-simplified the idea, but everything's possible at some level.

Anyways.... this applies to our little house.  It's perfect for us, but it needed some dream items. One was my craft room (done!), another thing was a huge walk in closet (done!)... and now we're on to something more adventurous - the Music Room.  The room where our "secret" project is being done.

What's Next?

After having all the bits of drama since the start of May, things were starting to take their toll. More so on me, BW, and thus in turn, the ever patient GW.  It's quite exhausting trying to plug forward with life when it feels like the world is so determined to slap you a bit at every turn. That's where Mr. Patience comes in.