Scary Cabin

Well, maybe moving day is a bit optimistic. The Living/dinning rooms do have furniture now. Too much furniture actually. We hauled up all the furniture we had been accumulating so we now have room for many people to sit comfortably. And for the first time ever, we had dinner on a real dining table with real chairs. We also sat on our new sofa and watched a movie Saturday night. When you’ve been working on a place for over 2 years, this is a real accomplishment.

Ok, enough lounging around, back to work! With our focus turned to the upstairs, we made some progress on the upstairs 1/2 bath. We knew we wanted to do something with this small room, but hadn’t really finalized any plans. A lot of time was spent with blue tape, laying out wall/door locations and thinking about what option would work best. The options were:

1. Do nothing. Just refinish the walls and tile the floor.

• pros: Not a lot of work.
• cons: Will have to live with the awkward small doors and cramped bathroom.

2. Remove the door from the non-master bedroom making it a master en-suite.

• pros: Again, not much work and makes electrical a bit easier.
• cons: Anyone sleeping in that room would then need to use the downstairs bath at night.

3. Expand the bathroom in to the front bedroom and move the door to the hallway.

• pros: Larger bath. Usable by both bedrooms. Later a dormer could be added to make room for shower.
• cons: The new door would be in an awkward location. Really should move plumbing to make it work.

4. Expand the bathroom into the master bedroom and move the door to the hallway.

• pros: Larger bath. Usable by both bedrooms. Later a dormer could be added to make room for shower. Door is in a less awkward location.
• cons: Losing some space in the master bedroom. This can be somewhat mitigated by using some of the space for built-in bookshelves.

We’re going with #4. The less awkward door and not having to move any plumbing to make it work were really the deciding factors. We did tear out the one bathroom wall and started building the new wall. The new wall is only about 8 inches away from the old, so we’re not taking a lot of space from the bedroom.