I cannot believe its April already. I go back to work in two weeks, which means I'm in slight panic mode regarding my maternity leave bucket list. I sure will miss being home with Jameson and the rest of the family. I think Ben is ready for me to get out of the house more though...I've been encroaching on his alone time. So to compensate, I gave him a project. Fix up the front entry and turn it into an office of sorts so that when I go back to work I have somewhere to set up shop at home from time to time. Give Project Ben a project and he'll wow you every time.
This space used to be the main entry of the house. It had a big, dark double door with no windows. We think at one point there might have been another wall so that it was actually a bedroom. Regardless, the front room we inherited was kind of awkward with no clear purpose. It's odd to have the main entry open into an office, but we decided that it made sense for us. And honestly, this is by no means a main entry for us. Everyone who comes here enters through the kitchen, or maybe the mudroom. It is a house of many doors, so you can pick your poison, but this front one is rarely chosen. Speaking of poison, our boys are suddenly obsessed with discussing poisonous snakes. They don't want to ever go to Texas, Arizona or Nevada, thanks to a puzzle map we have that has pictures of snakes near these states. They're also concerned about honey bees and biting creatures in general. Where does that come from?!
I digress. Other than the sad dark door that was here when we bought the house, the front room itself wasn't in terrible condition. It had new-ish carpet and two functional closets. Well, that lasted for all of three weeks when we took over. One closet was turned into the basement access. Ben pulled out the old boiler vents which exposed a lot of damaged walls. Other work done to the house chipped away at the plaster job. When we moved in it turned into a junk room and painting room out of necessity. Needless to say, this room got much, much worse before it got better.
Like the rest of the original house, we knew there were wood floors under the carpet which we planned to expose anyways, so making a mess of the new-ish carpet wasn't all that unfortunate. The floors were kind of rough though and needed a lot of patching, which Project Ben handled with no problem. He even got to purchase a planer to help with the job, so he's incredibly happy about that. I think he's wanted a planer for about seven years. The original floor was painted a dark brown but we decided to paint it all white once it was patched, rather than sand and refinish right now. Maybe someday, but not with three tiny dudes in the house. Paint was the quick and easy fix, and I've been really happy with how the other painted floors in the house have turned out.
Since the lower walls were pretty damaged we decided to panel the bottom third of the walls for a wainscot look. The upper parts of the walls were tricky...the only solution was to patch the cracks and hope for the best. That's where my dad came in. He helped us last winter patch all of the kids bedrooms upstairs that had years of water damage on them. Those walls have held up incredibly well, so we invited him back to patch the office. He was happy to do so, and came every day for about a week. It's quite a process. Mud, dry, sand, repeat.
Front entry before:
Front entry/office after:
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| Ben's great grandpa was a pastor and built the two-sided desk. He wrote many sermons using it. We got this piece handed down to us when we first got married and never felt like we had a good spot for it. I will admit I didn't even want it for a while. Now it fits perfectly in this old home, and doesn't feel nearly as huge and dark when placed in a white room. The chairs I found at Harvest Antiques in Holland, already perfectly painted in my favorite color. |
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| The little sewing desk was my mom's, but before that it was my grandma Stob's. When my mom decided she no longer wanted it I jumped at it. It's so small and so cute and just reminds me of my grandma. |
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| This cabinet came from Ben's grandma Reuschel. Also adorable. And needs more stuff. I haven't really staged this room if that's not already obvious, |
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| New colorful rug to break up the white floor + wainscot combo. |
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| One of my favorite days! Coming home to this beautiful door. I don't have a picture of what the old door looked like on the inside. But replacing it with this brightened up the room so much. Amazing what a few small windows can do. |
Going in we didn't think this project would be all that much work. It's a pretty small room. The to-do's seemed very reasonable and simple. The timeline wasn't tight...pretty much just to get it done before I went back to work. Also, once Spring rolls around Ben is heading outside for porch work, and I knew if this wasn't done by April it would end up being October. All in all it took about 8 weeks, mainly because we just worked on it during down time. Ben rarely worked on the room rather than playing with the kids, and for that I'm grateful. He's super-dad sometimes.
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| Some flooring had been patched with cement in order to lay carpet at some point. Ben pulled all of that out and added in new boards, courtesy of his new planer. |
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| Nobody's house looks good in the winter, right? Ours might have been a little trashy for a while, as the planer and miter box were set up on the porch for weeks. Very convenient for this project. |
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| Meanwhile, February was awesome and I just hung out outside when I could. Jameson even spent a lot of time outside. I didn't think that would happen until at least April. Lucky January 2017 baby! |
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| Hello, beautiful. Thanks for helping Ben fix the floor. |
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| My dad evaluating the damaged walls. |
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| Pretty bad, eh? Don't worry, he saved them. |
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| And we paid him in daily baby snuggles. |
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| Wall paint day was a family affair. I cut in, these three clowns rolled out. Benjamin Moore Beach Glass. |
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| Ellis never passes up an opportunity to nail something. Ben's a great dad...he almost always says "yes" when the boys want to help. They're going to learn so much from him. |
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| Don't worry, low-odor(ish) paint meets Jameson's approval. |
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| Ben had to oil prime everything before we could paint. It stunk us out of the house for the evening. |
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| TSP-ing the floor before painting. |
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| The night before I had the desk clear, clean, and organized. Then Project Ben woke up and took over. |
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| My precise closet design. |
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| Nailed it. |
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| There are always cars everywhere in this house, brand new painted floors are no exception. |
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| Type A-ing the glass after painting the door. Sometimes I'm Type B, sometimes A. Ben's the same. We just say we are both Type AB. |
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| These doors are so much better than the dark slatted ones! And we are almost done. |
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| Until Ben pulled back a little bit of carpet to fix the transition and found more patch work to do. He patched and painted and then I walked through it. Oops... |
And that's a wrap! A beautiful home office that hopefully stays organized. Any office we've ever had has been a disaster, but I'm motivated to keep this one looking tidy. It is the formal entry, after all.
Next on the list is to clean the house and take a break from inside projects for a while. Spring is here and thus we will be moving outside. Hooray!!
