Third Bedroom Photos

the third bedroom

The third bedroom in the house was used as an office. It was notable mostly for some seriously odd (and rickety) shelving sticking out in the middle of the room, and some bad paneling on one wall:

Despite its original obvious shortcomings, poor thing, we could see that the room had great proportions and its one window has a pretty view facing east over the pool and patio area.

After the carpet was removed in the great carpet massacre of April 2002, the shelves were the next to go. That wretched paneling put up a he** of a fight, and left us much to remember it by, mostly in the form of adhesive splotches on the wall:

The walls were wrestled into submission and smooooothness after many hours of patching and many buckets of joint compound. Did you know joint compound tastes a bit like the paste you used to eat as a kid? G'head, ask us how we know...

Anyway, after patching, this bedroom got a fresh coat of neutral paint, and bright white trim and doors, as well as a ceiling fan. The window treatment was replaced as well. Here's what the room looks like now (roll your mouse arrow over the top two photos for a before and after view, or click on any photo for a larger view):

The prior owners of the house were obviously not big on home maintenance and repair, and were not very handy. We have found a wide variety of "repairs" they made that didn't actually repair anything, and have come to the conclusion that they were just pretty hapless when it came to stuff around the house. This bedroom contains the quintessential prior owner repair... When we first saw the house, the door to this room was held open by a shoe crammed under the door:

The shoe was left there, in the exact same spot, when we moved in, and when we took the shoe out, the door closed. No problem, we figure, the house has settled and the door just needs to be rehung-- we didn't even bother to look at it and figured we'd deal with it when we started on the room. When we went to paint the baseboards, though, we took the shoe out to get behind the door, bent down, and lo and behold, there had been a door closer installed on the door sometime in the past! The prior owners, though, never even noticed, and if they did, never bothered to replace the closer with a regular hinge pin-- they just crammed a shoe under it and left it.

We have a tradition of leaving something of the prior owners' in each house that we do, that to us typefies our impression of them. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes sentimental. Yup, we found our candidate for this house! The door closer remains installed, and the shoe is still doing it's duty:

Anyway, as a final note, the above photos, pretty as they are, are pictures of this room in its current incarnation. We say current, because it's now a bedroom, but we're lasciviously eyeing the space for a formal library. Yes, lasciviously... do you have any idea how sexy floor-to-ceiling bookcases can be when you have 45 cartons of books presently stored in the attic? Stay tuned for the fate of this room...