Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Office

I will call this room IJs office, as it will be his office (makes sense huh?) IJ is my husband, but I have decided to cloak his name in mystery as I certainly will express many opinions here on MY blog that he will not agree with. I have reminded him that if he does not like it, he is always free to create a blog of his own; that seems to have quelled the debate. I have to think that originally this room was a den, or a library, or a ‘gentlemen’s smoking” room perhaps. It just has a mellow, masculine feel. One of the really great things about this room when we got the house is that it had a really cool Murphy bed. However, after pleas from Dad, it was agreed that the space would function much better as a built-in bookcase. Also, the bed frame was too short to support a conventional mattress, which my husband found out after spending several nights trying to sleep in a contorted position. I now have to agree, and as is shown in subsequent pictures Dad retrofitted original cabinetry removed from the kitchen to build a great bookcase and cabinets for IJ’s business documentation. He even put in recessed lighting which makes it look pretty classy. The real problemo with this room was a significant drop in the flooring that coincided with the entry of the room. Thinking we had to have a flexible surface for our roller-coaster floors, we had initially considered using a flexible laminate to resurface the floors in both the front entryway and IJ’s office. We had met with the flooring guy several times and I even went to his home to look at the product in his historic home; nice but nothing jaw dropping. When he last came over to the house to asses the floors and I pealed back the carpet and saw the beautiful wood floors, he didn’t even comment that they could be saved; just let’s tear everything up and put in my product. This just gave me a bad feeling and I called IJ immediately and voiced my concerns. Luckily he was with a friend who recently had his wood floors refinished and we got a great recommendation for the craftsmen we eventually hired (more on these guys later). Anyway, just look what has transpired in this room! The height differential, caused by a decades old separation of the supporting beam, was repaired, new flooring then put in place and the stain matched. Just absolutely gorgeous…from derelict to stunning and much under the cost to put in a totally “real simulated wood” floor. Hey, don’t ever let any salesman talk you into taking anything original out of your house without checking out the options first. I’m thinking in hindsight, this will probably the most important thing we could have learned in this entire process. As an added note, IJ did the Tuscan finish on the walls and daughter K picked out the Valspar “gaucho” trim color. Dad, of course, built the bookshelves, and I did the rest of the grunt work. (Note to hubby…still need to get a light fixture...J

1 comment:

lizzie said...

Oh, you must be so happy! Good for you for not being swept into a sale (and probably the easier route) and for thoroughly researching your options. The 'new' floors look amazing and will for much farther into the future than the other choice would have.

Thanks for including the Murphy bed conversion. I'm struggling with a similar decision and am relieved to see a positive outcome to a permanent alteration. Great job!