Tour the Addition – Drywall Stage

Do you know what is all-encompassing? Living in a house while adding onto and remodeling it. It takes over your life, and everything else goes on the back burner. It’s not like the slow DIY room remodels I’ve done in the past, it’s much more…furious. Also, it’s SO dusty.

Here is the good news though: We survived. More than survived, actually; I’d say it went better than we could have hoped for. All eight kids were great sports about being shoved into two bedrooms, and we rarely heard a complaint.

So today I’m here to give you a tour of the house at the drywall stage—which was actually about ten weeks ago now. Like I said, all-encompassing.

As of right now, we are almost finished with the addition. That is, everyone is moved into their new spaces, moving boxes are mostly unpacked, and the layer of drywall dust on everything has been cleaned (which was the best feeling ever). There are still quite a few finishing things to be completed (plus all the outdoor stuff), but the addition only took a total of three months. My husband worked like a madman to get it finished as soon as possible so that we could all stop living on top of each other.

Before I get to the pictures, here is the layout of the addition/remodel. It has four bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a laundry room and is roughly 700 square feet. The front half is a converted sunken one-car garage, and the back half is brand new.

We’ll start at the front of the house and work our way back. This is just the boring drywall stage…when it is complete, I will go room by room with all the fun details.

Alright, let’s get on the tour already.

Addition Tour – Drywall Stage

At the very front and top of the addition is the sleeping loft/fourth bedroom.

Yes, I’m talking about that small bright rectangle in the above picture…we had to get creative to get that last bedroom in here.

The room is 6×9, accessed by a wall ladder, and about 5’6″ at its tallest. It isn’t a full-time bedroom; this room is for my college-aged stepdaughter who will be here during the summer, holidays, and random weekends. It will have a twin XL-size mattress, a small dresser, hanging space, a decent-sized TV on the wall, and an entire wall of windows with a view. It’s a pretty cool area, actually. It’s really hard to take pictures of, so here is a short video I took about a month ago so you can get a better feel for it.

Next up, we have the front ground-level bedroom. This bedroom is the biggest, but a weird shape.

This is the view from the doorway. It has tall ceilings, a big window, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then when you turn the corner, this is the rest of the bedroom.

This section is directly under the loft, so it is the same size, 6×9. It is 7 feet tall, so tall enough to walk under. There wasn’t enough ceiling height to make both the loft bedroom and this bedroom stand-able, and this bedroom won since it is a legit full-time bedroom. The nook here holds a queen-size bed and a single nightstand.

Here is the view from the bed nook into the rest of the room.

This will be my 14-year-old stepdaughter’s room, and she wants it clean and bright – white walls, white trim, white furniture, and light pink decor.

Here is what the front of the house (and those bedrooms) looks like. The first picture is before we started, and the second is what it looks like now. It’s a mess, obviously, but you can see the progress.

The two larger clerestory windows are in the loft bedroom, and the smaller one is in the front bedroom.

Working our way backward, next we have the middle bedroom. This one isn’t weirdly shaped like the front room, but it is small. It’s also the only bedroom with a closet (the rest are getting wardrobes).

This room is only 10 x 9, so we added a loft last minute to give her some extra space. The loft can fit a twin-sized mattress for sleeping, or she can put her bed on the ground, making the loft a cozy little hangout area or a space for friends to sleep over.

This will be my 12-year-old stepdaughter’s room, and she wants it to be the opposite of her sister’s—black walls with neon accents. Think 80s roller rink. We’re going all in.

Speaking of future room plans and decor, allow me to take you on a small rabbit trail –

If I have learned anything so far during blended family life, it is that boys and girls are very different.

I could write a 10-page list of the differences between the boys and girls in my family, but for the sake of this post, let’s just go with one bedroom-related example.

My boys (and my stepson) don’t care about home decor, and they don’t really have an opinion about their bedroom. If I really force it I can elicit a halfhearted opinion… but if I ignored their input completely, they likely wouldn’t notice. Since I have had only sons up until recently, I thought this might just be how kids operate.

But I was wrong, because my stepdaughters are a whole different story. I asked them what they wanted for their rooms, and I got opinions — not like a forced boy opinion, but REAL opinions. I got paint colors, trim colors, furniture colors and styles, full mood boards, and Amazon shopping lists. It’s wild, and it’s really fun to see what they create and see their personalities represented in their design choices. I mean, that’s what design is all about, right?

Alright, back to the main trail. Here is the view from the hall outside the girls’ bedrooms (all are in the previously sunken one-car garage) toward the back of the addition.

At the top of the stairs, the doorway on the right leads to the rest of the house, and to the left is the new exterior door that leads to the driveway and detached garage.

Here is that opening from the outside; it’s the hole behind the two new windows.

Heading back inside, here is the back half of the addition. The laundry room is the first doorway on the left, and the bathroom is after that.

Both of those rooms have low ceilings, no windows, and no working lights. They’re basically caves at this point. Here is a zoomed-in floor plan of those areas, so you know what you’re looking at.

Here is a shot of the laundry room…there is nothing really noteworthy in there yet. It’s a tiny room with a washer and dryer, and that is it.

And here is the bathroom.

The cabinets are flat-panel maple (just like the kitchen cabinets), and I have plans for a terrazzo tile countertop to ceiling tile, with hanging mirrors and gold MCM-style sconces.

That big hole in the back wall is a linen closet. When the house was getting framed we realized that the ceiling was too low for the area to be useful on the far side, so we pulled the outside wall in by another two feet and made it storage. It will be getting a custom cabinet front so it looks like a built-in.

Here is a view from inside the bathroom, with a peek at the shower tile going in.

I am deeply in love with the shower tile. I want it for my bathroom, where the shower tile is boring and white. There is nothing wrong with white (I picked it myself), but this is on another level.

Last up, we have the back bedroom, which is for my 17-year-old stepson. This room is 9×17, with a ceiling that is 8.5 feet at the tallest and 3 feet at the lowest. As you can see with this room (and the others), additions aren’t like building from scratch…you have to work with what you have, and we have an extremely low roofline.

You can make lemonade out of lemons though, and make your negatives work for you.

We made lemonade by designing a built-in king bed for the short side of the room. It will have build-in shelving on one side and drawers for storage underneath. The low ceiling + built-in bed will make it an intentional-looking, cozy sleeping area instead of a useless space that no one but a toddler can stand in.

I’m designing this room (boy, ya know…) and have decided to play into the coziness by color-drenching it in very dark blue. That means the walls, trim, build-ins, everything will be the same color. The accent furniture will all be wooden, and the accent color will be terracotta/rust (like the shower).

I think it’s going to turn out very cool and sophisticated, if I may say so myself.

Here is a last shot from the back bedroom torward the front of the addition, which brings us to the end of todays tour.

I always struggle with the ending paragraph to a blog post, so I’m going to NOT stare a blinking curser for an embarrassing amount of time, and instead just say thank you for reading. I will be back at some point in the future with design plans for each bedroom, all of which are very different.

And with that, it’s now time for mint chocolate chip ice cream and cult documentaries with my husband. I hope your night is just as good.