The House Part 3: Daddy's Office

Next (and somewhat simultaneously) on the list was Daddy's office, which was going to go into the partially finished space already created in the attic.  You've already seen some of the work that went in there--When we bought the house, the room had a gaping hole under the window where the original larger window had been before; it was also missing a door, and still needed all the finishing touches like flooring and baseboard.  It was a mess, but full of possibility:

When the contractors finished, it looked like this:

There was still a lot to be done, but two of the biggest items had been taken care of.  We quickly went to work to tackle the rest of it:

1. .  The wiring itself was updated, but not the outlets, go figure.  So Daddy changed out the plugs...and in the process accidentally pulled too hard on the first one when he was removing it, somehow managing to disconnect it from the main supply wires, thereby disconnecting all the other outlets in the room at the same time.  It took 3 friends and a small hole punched in a wall on the outside of that room (really just some drywall blocking access to the eave) to discover the problem and reconnect things, and of course it took much longer than planned as a result.

2. I washed that filthy dirty door and the walls, and we both vacuumed and swept and vacuumed again to get all the dust and gunk off the floor in preparation for the new flooring.

3. We took down the old curtain rod that was glued to the wall.  GLUED.  And then patched up the huge holes we'd made during its removal...

3. I painted--primer and paint, 3 coats again as in most of the other rooms.  Except I also had to do the ceiling and all the trim in here too.

4. Daddy cut plexiglass to fit into the window's screen insert...He was going to need some AC in that room, and a portable that vents through a window was our best bet on a budget.  But the window is a casement one that opens out, not up, so we couldn't just partially open it and stick the vent in the opening like one would normally.  We rigged a system of cut pieces of a sheet of plexiglass and glued them together with industrial glue.  The stuff was a pain to cut, but the result works like a charm.  :)  And since it's a screen insert, it's removable for the seasons.

5. I wasted an hour and a half one evening at Lowes while a guy who normally worked in the garden section but was filling in for a coworker that night tried to help me get what I needed for our new flooring.  I'd been checking out a few stores and already knew what I wanted and needed, so nothing important got missed as a result...So why did it take such a ridiculous amount of time?  When it came to finding baseboard, neither of us knew what was what, and the computer was no help, and it was late so no one else who knew anything was apparently around...  I ended up getting window casing instead of actual baseboard, but I didn't care too much as it was still an edger wood...until, after having lined up some of the flooring, we realized we were about an inch too short...something that normal, thicker baseboard + quarter rounds would hide.  Gah!  I returned the casing and picked up the real stuff that time around, at significantly higher cost...But it was pre-painted.  I was D-U-N with painting by then, and willing to spend for a little reprieve.

6. We laid down the flooring...and discovered in the process that this room is not entirely squared.  And it isn't even just one wall that's slightly off.  EVERY SINGLE WALL is a different length.  Of course the 'parallel' walls are only off by an inch or so from each other, such a small difference that normally one would never notice...but in this case, our laminate wood flooring fit perfectly without having to cut it at one end of the room...and not at all at the other.  We then discovered that the circular saw we'd purchased was no good on said flooring, even with a blade that should have done the trick.  Friends to the rescue again--we found several very handy, close-by friends during those first couple of weeks, let me tell you!  One had a table saw that made quick work of the laminate after Daddy brought it all over to his place.  Another loaned us a similar saw a little later that day that made cutting the baseboard pieces, once we got to that stage, a breeze.
We officially moved in on August 10th, a Saturday, and we finished Daddy's office very late on August 11th, the day before he was going to need it for his work.  THAT.  Was a busy weekend.  Phew!

This is the room as it stood on the evening after we moved.  

He's since turned it into a great man-cave, complete with our favorite pop cans for raised shelving: