the studio
The "studio," as it was billed in the listing for the house, is actually a garage that was built in the 1970's and converted to living space some time later:
We use the term "converted" rather loosely, because as you can see, it wasn't converted much! The garage door was bricked in with glass block, and the entire thing was painted teal:
Inexplicably, the shoplights and the cold, hard cement floor were not converted...
This room is accessed through french doors from our newly redone rear entryway, and now, after renovation, is actually a great 16x22 useable space. The renovation was completed in January-March 2003, so take a look at those months in the Journal for the blow-by-blow account of the remodel with photos.
For the summary, though, here goes...
We installed a subfloor:
Removed the glass block and replaced it with windows (roll your mouse over the image below for before and after views):
And added french doors to the west side exterior of the house overlooking the pasture (roll your mouse over the image below for before and after views):
Those french doors will ultimately open to the porch we plan to add on that side of the house.
The studio's interior underwent a similar transformation. After discovering the rather inconvenient fact that the room had no insulation, we tore out all the drywall, added insulation and a vapor barrier, and re-drywalled the room.
Then we had to work on the interior of the studio in order to "convert" it from ugly into, well, not ugly.
First, we installed the same pre-finished beech hardwood floors that we had previously installed in the master bedroom. The test run in the master bedroom was a success-- we were pleased with the way they look, not to mention they wear like iron and clean up with a quick sweep and damp mop. Hmmm, "wears like iron and cleans up quick"... hey, more than we can say for us! Looks like we've got us a winner (click the image for a larger view):
Once the floor was down, we installed two floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases for storage for all manner of things, and seriously beefed up the moulding in the room. We added custom-assembled ten-inch baseboards (ooh, doesn't that sound impressive? Eh, it's really not. It's just that, well, what company actually makes ten-inch baseboards anymore? None. So of course you have to custom build them...) We also included crown moulding to match the rest of the house, and architrave moulding.
Oooh, yes, we learned a new $64,000 word... architrave. Hey, we ripped out the cheap skinny plastic crap around all the windows and doors in the entire house and installed beefier, more attractively-detailed window and door casing just because the original plastic crap was butt-ugly. But now, we come to find out that what we were really doing was replacing architrave moulding:
architrave [aktrev]: n. Architect.
1. the lowest part of an entablature that bears on the columns.
2. a moulding around a doorway, window opening, etc.
[ via French from Italian, from {archi-} + trave beam, from Latin trabs]
Right. Whatever. So once we installed the ohbabyarchitrave, and spent days, hours, weeks, years painting all the da** architrave in the room, it looked like this (click any image for a larger view):
And after furniture, it looks like this... Roll your mouse over the first two photos below for before and after images, or click any image for a larger view:
We've still got to slipcover that dark green armchair and paint that desk (both in white), as well as place all the stuff we've been dying to put in here, so don't go away for long... check back with us soon for the final version of the studio!
Update: Well, as of November 2003, we'd managed to get the desk painted white:
And we managed to get our stuff moved in. Unfortunately, since the stuff got moved in, the room's been in no condition to actually photograph! And the dark green chair hasn't been slipcovered yet, either. Soon, we hope, we'll be able to take updated photos.
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