Taking On The Girls Room

Upstairs we had only two rooms. One for the girls and one for the boys. When my oldest moved out, it was decided that each kid could now have their own room. The girls shared one room that was 13' x 26' and the boys shared an odd shaped room about 10' x 26' with a large bite taken for the water heater, bathroom and a chimney.

We split the large room and gave one of the new rooms to each of the boys. My youngest daughter got the odd shaped room. We plan on fixing some of the shape of this room by removing the chimney and moving the door to make the room more usable.

As you can see from the two pictures to the below, the door was on the far right of the room next to the chimney. This was ok, but really made the room unusable in many ways. There was no way to put anything next to the door except for a small dresser. The room between the chinmey and the water heater (far left out of the picture) was just big enough for a twin bed to slip into. T This is how we had it when the boys had this room. There was a bunk bed in that position.

   

The main change was removing the chimney which is covered in the demolition section. Unfortunatly, this is the best picture (left above) taken showing the location of the room before the door was moved so we have recycled it to this page. The picture on the right is a during construction but has the old door marked and the water heater door also. The water heater door will be moved around the courner to put the two doors back to back so only one area is used up by door swing space.

The wood was a little tough to pull out and really hard to nail in to. The old wood is very hard wood. No need to rip it all down though. That would have been wasteful. Only a few 2x4s where needed to make the main change. And a new door and paint of course. We also needed a couple sheets of sheet rock. The nails, sheet rock mud and most of the sheetrock we already had from some of the other projects around the house. This was by far the least expensive project costing under $175 for the entire room. It was so easy we even repainted all dressers and the bed. That was fun!

Construction Pictures

  

  

Take a look at the next two images and you will get a good feel for the change and the value it added to the home. By moving the doors and making them both share the same swing space we reclaimed a great deal of usable space in the room and in the hall way. The kids often play video games in the hall with their friends and now there is more room for kids to sit without blocking the doors.