The Bedroom has a Fourth Window!

My bedroom has always felt…tricky. It’s a big enough room, but between three doors, three windows, and a radiator, it’s been difficult to land on a layout that feels balanced and comfortable. Two of the four walls are long enough to place a bed, but one option places it sort of uncomfortably snugly between the closet door and the corner, and the other puts it on this wall, above. To center it in the room means it overlaps with the window on the right side, but to throw it off-center still looks unbalanced and…off. Don’t even try to place a bedside table in a way that looks not weird! Forget about it. And this is a full-size bed we’re talking about, mind you, but I have big dreams and aspirations of upgrading to a king because bed is the best place.

I forgot to take any pictures of the room before I moved everything out of it, so just take my word for it. It’s awkward and not in a cute and charming way. My bedroom made me feel inadequate because I couldn’t figure out how to make anything look OK in it. Also probably why I’ve been living with unfinished plaster walls for three years, which look kind of arty in a picture but are really just dusty and derelict in real life.

So anyway, remember how I’m restoring the side of my house? Remember how I’m adding a few windows in the process? Somewhat counter-intuitively, I feel like adding another window to this room already full of windows and doors and other obstructions will actually make the space feel more balanced from both the inside and the outside of the house.

Back in 1950, this photo was taken of the outside of my house. That window highlighted in pink isn’t there anymore, and neither is the one directly below it, but having one in that location totally makes the exterior in my opinion. Or at least that side of the house.

After I saw this photo for the first time, I got all excited about these windows, thinking maybe they were just hiding behind some vinyl siding and a sheetrock patch and how cool would it be to find them! So I did the natural thing and made a hole in the living room wall downstairs to see if, perchance, the window itself or any evidence of it were still inside the wall somehow and found…nothing! The whole wall was plaster and lath with no sign of an obvious patch, and behind it was brick and mortar, which is how most of my house is insulated…but really isn’t something that was done past about 1900. This photo is from 1950, so it seemed super unlikely that somebody between 1950 and now would have removed the window, filled the cavity with brick and mortar, nailed up lath, and applied horsehair plaster. Partly because I don’t think anyone would do that given modern methods and materials, let alone the same people who did plenty of other pretty sloppy work on my house during that same period. Added to this was the fact that false windows—where there are shutters on the exterior to balance a facade, but no actual window at all behind them—are actually pretty common here. I didn’t know that until this old photo of my house sauntered into my life and I started paying attention, but once you start looking for them, you really do see them all over the place! It’s a nifty little illusion.

Fast-forward to me planning the whole side-of-house-restoration project, and it occurred to me that making that false window into a real window would actually be really nice in my bedroom for the reasons outlined above, so why not! I’m doing all this other shit, might as well.

The thing about working with Edwin is that he is a major early bird and I am the total opposite. The man likes to start work around 6:30 in the morning, which is often only a few hours after I’ve gone to bed. Sometimes small things get lost in translation, like when I explained this whole let’s-add-a-window-right-here plan, I didn’t really mean “let’s rip out all of the plaster and lath along this entire wall,” but that’s what happened. Sigh. I think we probably could have framed in the new window while keeping much of the plaster wall still intact, but that ship has now sailed. Spilt milk. Whatcha gonna do.

ANYWAY, when I rolled in at about 9, dude had the wall opened up and had started the brick removal and…what is THAT?! That is unmistakably a window frame, buried in the wall at the location in the old photo, and all of those bricks on the floor had been stuffed into the stud bays. But again…the brick and mortar, the continuous, not-patched plaster and lath, the studs used inside the window jamb matching in size/era to the rest of the framing lumber originally used for the house! IT DON’T MAKE NO SENSE!

It sounds sort of odd, but I still think there was never an actual window here, at least by the time the house had finished construction. Mistakes happen, right? Isn’t it possible that a builder misread the plans, or the architect changed his mind mid-build, or the homeowners came by to check the progress and decided they wanted a little more wall space than all these windows would allow for? It could happen, right? In my head it’s actually a big blow-out fight between the architect (my beautiful, balanced fenestration design!) and the homeowner (where a girl gonna put her chifforobe?!) and ultimately the homeowner won, because that’s how things work, and the architect threw up his hands and left to, I dunno, go smoke opium with a hooker at the local tavern (now my friend John’s house).

I’m sure this is all much more interesting and exciting to me than it is to you since it’s my house and all, but I love this stuff!

ANYWAY, after Edwin patiently listened to me get all worked up and excited over all this, we went about framing in the new window! I actually decided to move the window over from its original location about 8″, which centers it between the two adjacent windows on the exterior. I thought it would look better both inside and out, but the inside part is going to take a little longer to pay out because I think I’ve hatched a little plan to shift a few walls around upstairs (I know…) which  is a story for a different day. Don’t sweat it.

This was the most deferred gratification part of this process, because we didn’t actually install it until we took the original siding off of this part of the house for the whole clapboard restoration process I made up last year. But this way the rough opening was already prepped and the actual installation was just a matter of placing the window in the hole and attaching the exterior casings, which we now know goes pretty fast.

Siding removal for this part of the house was an intense day. It started with removing all of the vinyl and the thin layer of foam insulation underneath it. As usual, the original wood siding (which actually looks pretty good in this picture—don’t be fooled!) was in pretty poor condition. With the new window up on top, the new cornerboard at the front, the new false window on the first floor, the condition of the siding, and the desire to install better insulation in the walls, removing it just makes the most sense! Same story, different wall.

Eek! This is the part where things look so insane and like the house will never be put back together and oh my god, what have I done.

Especially from the inside, where my bedroom was feeling a little too bright and airy for my taste.

We removed all the bricks, installed blocking between the studs, and insulated with 2″ foam. Boom boom boom! As the sun was setting, we started installing sheathing. Edwin was ready to go home but I threw a small tantrum so he stayed and helped me because this is not how I wanted to leave my house overnight. Ha!

Once the sheathing is up, it doesn’t look so scary. We’re using 1/4″ plywood as sheathing here—I’ve noted this before, but the original house doesn’t have sheathing at all, so using a standard 1/2″ sheathing would add too much depth to the wall, meaning I’d have to extend the jambs, window casings, and sills for the siding to fit correctly. The sheathing has made the siding process slightly more complicated, but nothing too challenging.

Obviously we sheathed right over the new opening, which was mainly because there wasn’t enough time to install the window that day. It’s easy enough to cut the sheathing out from the interior with a reciprocating saw, and the sheathing installation is a little easier if you don’t have to make a bunch of complicated cuts on the ground to fit an opening.

Boom! Look! A hole!

ANNNNNNDDDDD, window! Obviously we’ve jumped ahead a little so you can see the new cornerboard on the left, the false window cased out on the bottom (shutters are waiting patiently in the dining room for their hardware, which should be arriving tomorrow!), and the new bedroom window up top! Isn’t that…satisfying?! Clearly there is still a lot of work to be done, but finally seeing the basic shape of things come together feels so huge! She’s come a long way from this…

Almost there, house. Almost there.

The Bedroom has a Fourth Window! published first on manhattan-nest.com

Spooky Halloween wreath

IKEA parts: Onskan red LED Christmas light string

There are a number of examples of skeleton Halloween wreaths on the net but mine has the added feature of a spooky red glowing skull, with burning red eyes!

The skeleton itself is from a Spotlight craft store and is easily assembled into a wreath form using hot melt glue. I did a dry run to get the right shape and then a small spot of glue where the bones crossed each other to hold in place. Once I was happy with the basic shape I gave each joint a liberal application of the hot glue – this thing is not coming apart easily!

We had a set of IKEA Onskan red LED Christmas lights going spare and I thought it would be cool to have red eyes staring out at any visitors. First I took a drill and made holes in the eye sockets, there was already a hole in the back of the skull, and then using various bits of wire and string I managed to thread an LED light through each eye socket and hot glued into place, threading all the remaining lights into the skull.

The battery compartment was hot glued onto the back of one of the long bones and the cables tidied up and tacked in place with more hot glue so none of the electrics could be seen from the front.

All that remained to do was string up the wreath using some fishing line onto the screen door and wait until twilight before flicking on the switch!

~ by Dominic Reynolds

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Adding Built-In Bookshelves Around Our Living Room Doorway

It’s no secret by now that we love our new kitchen (you can see the full reveal here, and what’s inside our cabinets here). Buuuuuut there’s a feature just beyond the kitchen that competes pretty hard for our affection: the new built-in bookshelves around the doorway to our living room.

They’re sort of an “homage” to the original built-in bookshelf that existed when we bought the house, just amped up and more balanced to fit our new open layout.

And speaking of homages, you may have noticed that they’re not terribly far off from the original built-in bookshelves that came with our second house, which wrapped around the cased opening that separated our dining room and our office.

And this time we got to correct one of the sad flaws of our second house’s inherited built-ins: the shelf depth! Hardly any of our books would fit on those shelves since they were so shallow (only around 6″), so we made sure our new ones are BBF (big book friendly).

But enough about old spaces, let’s talk about how we created this new shelving situation. This is what we were left with when the kitchen was rounding third base and gearing up to slide into home. Note the non-final lights over the island that we later switched out for more substantial pendants.

Actually, note a lot of things about this pic – we still had some paint touch-ups to do, some chair rail that had to come down during demo still needed fixing, and – well – those walls were looking pretty empty.

Believe it or not, at one point we actually considered scrapping the bookshelf idea entirely because we worried it would be too busy with the floating shelves in the kitchen. We wondered if just doing simple walls with maybe a sconce or some framed art would be the smarter choice. Thank GOODNESS we pushed through that hesitation because this wall full of shelving is one of our favorite features in the entire house.

For the bases, we knew we wanted some closed storage to hide all of our photo albums, old yearbooks, and other random bookish stuff. We considered buying more of the same exact cabinets that we have in our kitchen, but we realized we didn’t want it looking like our new kitchen was creeping its way into the living room. So we grabbed two of these unfinished, stock cabinets from Home Depot, which have a similar but not identical door style, and still fit with the style of our home.

To make this stock size (30″ wide x 30″ tall x 12″ deep) work for our space, we had to get a little creative. I built a platform out of scrap wood to raise it high enough so that the top would line up nicely with the top of the chair rail (accounting for the “counter” piece I’d be adding later). You can see that also lifted it nicely so the doors wouldn’t interfere with the baseboards. And adding some 2 x 4″ blocking to the back gave the cabinets some extra depth so our upper shelves could still be 13″ deep without jutting out right to the edge of each base (it’s always nice if your base cabinets are a bit deeper than the shelves above them).

I know that looks kinda all sorts of crazy above, but all that blocking got covered by these unfinished end panels. I also added a 1 x 2″ along the bottom edge to give the baseboard something to rest against along the front. And no, matchbox cars aren’t a crucial part of this project, they’re just the reality of chipping away at something over several days with kids in the house. They love to “decorate” things… even before they’re done.

If you’re wondering how they got there… it’s because I think someone thought I was building him a secret hideout.

Besides the adorable 2-year-old, a couple of other things were going on in that photo above. We also secured filler pieces to the sides of each cabinet to bridge the small gap between it and the wall, so it all looked flush and built-in once everything was caulked and painted.

The tape you saw on the wall was us trying to figure out how many shelves we wanted our bookshelves to have. The long, narrow top shelf that spanned the entire wall was a given, so the real question was whether we wanted three or four shelves on either side. Enter painter’s tape to the rescue!

With both options marked with tape, it was clear to us pretty quickly that we liked how the right side looked more airy and easygoing. We hoped it would keep things from looking too cluttered and also liked that it would accommodate some of our bigger books and taller shelf items. So three shelves it was – each 15″ tall and 13″ deep. Totally BBF.

With that decision made, I scrawled planned out all of my materials – trying to be as efficient as possible with my cuts so I wasn’t buying more MDF than I needed. I won’t attempt to narrate what you’re seeing below, but if it helps I was pretty much just duplicating my process for the built-in bookshelves upstairs. So if you’re looking for more steps & photos, here ya go.

We chose to prime and paint most of our materials BEFORE installing them, just because it’s faster to do it this way since you can roll all the boards and sides quickly (plus painting them after they’re installed can make you prone to pooling puddles in seams and corners). We still did touch-ups once everything was installed, but that went nice and quick. The color is Simply White by Benjamin Moore (in a semi-gloss finish) which is what’s already on the other trim in the room.

Building the two side bookshelves was easy – again, I just followed the same process I documented upstairs. It was figuring out that shelf across the middle that was a little bit of a thinker for me, since we had never tackled that before.

I couldn’t find specific instructions on how to do this, so I just landed on something that would work by holding things up and using the old noggin. I basically took advantage of what surfaces I had to secure things to and then added pieces where I didn’t have something to screw into. For instance, I started by adding sections of “header” boards across the back (STEP 1) that would give me an edge which I could then nail the vertical dividers into (STEP 2). Once those dividers were in, I could screw the bottom in from below (STEP 3).

The pic above is just a mock-up that I did while I was figuring this all out (the bottom piece was actually 8 feet long and spanned the entire length of the doorway), but doing a dry run like this to work things out is never a bad idea.

The shot below is how it actually looked as it started to come together. I’ve added some arrows to point out some additional places where things are secured. You can see I added a scrap piece to the ceiling too, which helps keep everything square. I also found that resting the board on the top of the doorway molding added a surprising amount of stability too.

You can also see in the photo above that those skinny shelves over the doorway are “double thick.” It’s a little hard to explain why, but it has to do with the 1×2″ pine I’d be facing all of the shelves with to create the look of thicker shelves. The long, 8ft bottom piece makes everything look good from below, while the smaller top pieces in each box help make sure the items sitting in them are level with the shelves on the ends. And as you’ll see below, once the 1×2″ facing pieces are added it all looks like one continuous, thick shelf (crown was also added but had yet to be caulked).

One thing I wasn’t happy with was how visible my “header” pieces were. We didn’t encounter this problem upstairs because that design had a much chunkier crown molding treatment that hid it. But in here, it just wasn’t something we wanted to see everyday.

So I cut some scrap pieces of plywood and fit them in there so that, once caulked and painted white, it would all look like one big seamless surface back there.

So once every seam was caulked and the touch-up paint dried (we gave them around 10 days to fully cure), we could put it all together for our final result.

Having all of these shelves to fill was like Christmas for Sherry. Our book stash was already plentiful (there are even more books in the built-ins below!) so all of those books are things we’ve actually read and love (aside from a few from relatives that are more of the keepsake variety). The 15″ shelf height did inspire some creative stacking in spots that didn’t have tall books (note the books laid horizontally atop a few of the vertical stacks on the left side – which weirded me out at first, but actually adds some nice randomness and a casual vibe to an otherwise meticulous-looking arrangement).

After starting with a completely randomized assortment, we landed on this “color grouped” arrangement that helps all those books feel a little less chaotic. There’s not a literal gradient or rainbow across the whole wall, but we put all of the blue-ish books together, the brown-ish books together, etc. We’ve never been people who organize our books by author or genre, so it’s easier to remember the color of the book for us (“it’s that green one!”) than read every single spine since we never had any system of organization before. So while we’ve heard from folks who just couldn’t deviate from having their books grouped by type or last name, the color thing works nicely for us.

And because we’ve been asked a few times, nope, we don’t buy books for their colorful covers (it’s always content over color around here). But we have noticed that hardbacks are typically covered with colorful fabric under their paper jackets, so if we know we love a book enough to buy it (as opposed to borrowing it from the library) we like to splurge for hardback when we can – especially at the used book store. And yes, we toss the book jackets. We used to save them but realized they spent years in bins so we let them go (not smart if a book is a collectible or a first edition, but none of ours are).

Also in our quest to make these cabinets feel related but not identical to the kitchen, Sherry found this cool latch hardware, which has a polished nickel finish like our kitchen hardware, but its mechanics are so unlike the pulls in there that it really differentiates them. I wouldn’t recommend them for frequently used cabinets (it’s a two step opening process: flip latch up, pull open) but since we go into these so rarely, they’re perfect.

Maybe I’m tooting my own horn a bit too much to say it feels like these were always here, but we both can’t imagine the house without them anymore. They make the living room feel cozy and lived in. They add more architecture to the room. And they return some of the storage function that was originally there in that corner built-in (and then some!).

And as much as we love how open and airy this feel during the day, we’re also quite fond of how it feels at night when we turn on the living room lamps and dim the kitchen lights. We’ll have to try to capture it on camera for you guys at some point. Oh and do you see those old ceramic tiles leaning on the shelves (one is a P and one is a 7)? They’re old wall tiles that used to mark subway stops & lines that we bought secondhand from an antique vendor – and they’re probably the coolest things in our entire house. Seriously.

Speaking of things on the shelves, Sherry “Moodboard” Petersik lived up to her middle name and made this for you guys. It’s full of books we own & enjoy, along with some similar (or identical) objects from our shelves:

1. Succulent candle (it smells ridiculously good)
2. This beachy book‘s full of cool aerial shots by Gray Malin
3. Tall blue vase to add some height & color
4. Sculptural pink bowl to sit on top of a book stack
5. Our favorite Novogratz book from way back in the day
6. Patterned bowls add some curves to all those straight book lines
7. The original Domino book = one of Sherry’s all time favorites
8. Ceramic pineapple with a pink top. Enough said.
9. Design Sponge At Home is chock fulla good stuff
10. Gold & marble llama book ends, just doing their llama thing.
11. Faux succulents LIVE 4EVA! (mwah-hah-hah)
12. Soft pink vase with a gold edge = all the swooning
13. Em Hendo’s awesome first book (complete with gold spine)
14. Wood & marble frame (framed art + books + curvy stuff = yes)
15. This book’s pages are straight up framable art
16. A faceted wooden box = great for height, warmth, and hiding stuff
17. Stylish pokey things are always a good idea
18. This gold dipped frame‘s great for working in more photos/art
19. Had to do it, it’s our second baby! And the navy blue spine shines proud on any shelf.

P.S. Speaking of things in our house, here’s a page full of our home’s paint colors & stuff we’ve bought/loved. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

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The Staff of Ikea-curtains

IKEA items used:
- HUGAD black curtain rod 120-210 cm
- BLÅST Finials, a pair
- ENTRERÄTT finials, a pair

I needed a Rassilon like staff for my Timelady Cosplay. One of the description of Rassilon’s staff top has “a sphere that looks like a galaxy is swirling in a glass ball”. But creating a glass ball ending for a staff looked difficult, and would yield a fragile one.

So I simply went for a curtain rod staff.

I set a BLÅST Finial at the smaller end of the HUGAD, a ENTRERÄTT finial at the bigger end. I am planing to add some blue glass paint on the BLÅST, around the golden glass paint (stars).

~ by Marmidotte

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Long wooden home office / study bench desk

For our home office/study renovation, we wanted a clean fresh look finished in white with a pale wood feature. The centrepiece was the work desk that needed to fit an area nearly 3 metres (9ft 10in) wide. After looking around for something to fit our design we decided that an IKEA hack was the way to achieve this.

To make this bench desk we used the following IKEA items:

• 2x GERTON Beech table tops
• 2x ADILS white table legs
• 2x FINNVARD trestles
• 1x BRIMNES white chest of drawers
• Other materials:
• 1x litre of oil based clear satin polyurethane varnish
• 4x pieces of round dowel cut to 5cm (2in) in length
• 2x T-bar steel mending plates with screws
• 4x 150mm (6in) steel mending plates with screws
• 1x small tub of matching wood colour putty
• Small amount of maple coloured wood varnish
• 1x tube of liquid nails
• 1x tube of white wood glue
• Clear rubber bump stop
• Bottle of mineral turpentine

Tools:

• 185mm Circular saw
• Power drill and various drill bits
• Electric screwdriver/cordless drill
• Hand sander
• 180 grit sandpaper
• Measuring square
• Tape measure
• D clamps
• Long spirit level
• Wipe cloth
• Paint brush

Steps:

1. Cut one of the GERTON table tops to length. Save the sawdust from the wood.

2. Rest the two GERTON table tops on each FINNVARD trestle raised to full height, with a collapsible ladder underneath for support. Face the factory-cut edges towards each other to ensure they are square.

3. Drill matching dowel holes spaced evenly along the facing edges and insert the dowel. Adjust as necessary to ensure that the fit is square and use the spirit level to ensure it is flat. Apply liquid nails to both ends of the dowel as well as along the wood face, and slide the table tops together. Wipe off excess glue.

4. Using the wood putty to fill in the join. Sprinkle and press in sawdust from step 1 to help colour match the join as much as possible. Let it set overnight.

5. Brush off the excess sawdust and sand back the join to be even with the table top. Repeat step 4 one more time to fill in imperfections in the join and to give the wood glue further time to set.

6. Brush off the sawdust one more time and sand back the join so that it is even to the table top.

7. Wipe the table top down with the mineral turpentine and a cloth, ensuring that the surface is dust free.

8. Apply the first coat of varnish, allow to dry, then sand back imperfections. Using the maple coloured varnish, dab a small amount along the join next to areas of darker wood to help ‘blend in’ the joint with the surrounding table tops.

9. Varnish and sand back two more times, leaving time to dry in between.

10. Under the table top, drill holes and screw in the mounting plates along the join to reinforce the dowel and glue join.

11. At the ‘back’ of the table, fit the two ADILS chair legs on either side of the join to provide central support.

12. Measure the height that you want the bottom of the table top to rest at. You will need to cut down the sides (from the top) and backing plywood of the BRIMNES drawers to match this.

13. Drill new dowel and screw points in the top of the BRIMNES side wood to mount the top piece on.

14. Add some white wood glue when fitting the BRIMNES top piece to secure it and cover any gaps between it and the side pieces.

15. Gently remove the supporting collapsible ladder and allow the table to stand on its own. Position it against the wall, and slide the BRIMNES table in to provide additional support.

16. Adjust the FINNVARD and ADILS height accordingly to ensure the desk is square and straight.

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