Before and After Reno Photos: Back Room Corner

I took photos of every corner of our house on the day we first took possession, but some of the pictures didn't turn out.

Thus, I do not have a true pictorial record of the shockingly ugly closet that was in the corner of the back room of our house. I have drawn you a picture (excuse my bad perspective attempts) of what it looked like - imagine a floor to ceiling cabinet made of two-by-fours and plywood, with metal sliding doors on top and bottom painted to look like wood panelling.

In the wall next to the closet were two small doors to extra storage - space stolen from the closet in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. As I said before, the floor was carpeted - did I mention carpeted in a lovely shade of puce?

I ripped the big metal/plywood closet out that first day, and the carpet the day after.

For a number of months, as we worked on other projects, the back room looked like this next photo. You could see the paint 'shadows' of past decorating, both before and after the metal closet. Some of these paint 'shadows' confirmed our suspicions that this room was added on originally as a kitchen (you could see the traces of hanging wall cabinets, and all the electrical plugs are still up high on the walls as if they were set above countertops). In this photo, you can just barely see that tiny wall cabinet behind the bookshelf.

When our second winter here rolled around, we decided to clean up the back room before the Sprout was born.

Jim took out the false wall cupboards (doubling the space in the bedroom closet opposite), and I plastered and smoothed the walls on the whole room. It took days (and a lot of plaster).

We painted the room yellow (or more precisely, "Blonde Beauty"), and it was bright and cheery, but was in desperate need of some quality shelving. Two years later my sister made the wise decision to go to furniture design school, and last summer she built us a beautiful built-in bookshelf.

Here it is with painter's tape around it.

We thought about doing natural wood shelves, but we had just blown our wad on a new fence and deck. So, we went for paint-grade plywood to match the rest of the trim in the room, with adjustable shelves.

It's so sturdy that you could climb it in places - but we aren't telling the Sprout that.

Once the painting was done and the adjustable shelves were in, we loaded it up with books, knick-knacks, and our clunky old TV. It's very elegant. And the piece de resistance: the built-in dictionary shelf above the television. Perfect for settling arguments over Boggle or the daily crossword.

There's a bit of quarter-round missing around the bottom, but one can't rush into those last little details, now, can one?