Quick weekend getaway. There is nothing like riding bikes in fresh mountain air!

This post is about a very long term project.

We had this room in between the kitchen and the garage with a fireplace in it. I guess it was the dining room? But the position of the side door to the outside, and the door out through the laundry room made a traffic pattern that made this room very small. The fireplace was so close to the wall on the right, that you could not really put chair or a sofa there. It was a frustrating, unusable waste of space!
In all the years in this house, we maybe had a fire in the fireplace three times. With frequent burn restrictions for pollution, and the pain of cleaning up after, we just didn’t use it.

Back at the end of May 2018, I took the boys to IL for a long trip while Bill stayed home. With the boys out of the house, each night after work, Bill tackled a little bit of this fireplace.

He put up some new drywall where the bricks used to be

He just covered over the actual fireplace with some plywood and painted it. The chimney is structural support for the house. The estimated we had for taking it out were huge. And supposedly a fireplace adds value to a home. So the chimney remains and if we ever want to reface and use the fireplace again, it is there.

We used the space like that for a whole year. It had some big shelves full of stuff in it while we reorganized and sold things through the house. This was the last room in the house to still have popcorn ceiling and it was our plan to take care of that. Estimates for that were also insane because the popcorn was painted. Scraping wasn’t going to work.

Bill finally put up some new beams where the fireplace used to be

And he put up all new drywall and retextured in that space!

It was amazing how much fresher it looked without that yellowed cobweb-laden popcorn

The room got a big splash of color

I am touching up the lines

Bill is hanging a board to mount photo displays

I really like digital picture frames because I have over 45,000 photos from the last 20 years. It is REALLY hard to choose what to frame and put on the wall. But the frames they sell are small and EXPENSIVE. For less money than an 8×10 digital frame, we bought a 32″ Roku TV on Prime Day! Ok, we bought three of them. They have a slideshow app, and paired with a USB stick, each TV shuffles through all 45,000 photos!

I did want a real piece of art in the room, so I bought a big canvas. We were going to make a family piece of art.

I bought lots of colors of acrylic paint and mixed with pouring medium

The boys made dump-cups of colors and put them on the canvas

All four of us together tipped and spun the canvas to spread the paint around

We brought the Lego display cabinets out from the playroom and put up some new Lamps. I love the way the painting turned out!

The boys each made a personal pour painting by themselves

Also on Prime Day, I got a great deal on these L-shaped desks. The wasted space room is now going to be the boys’ computer room!

They fit perfectly!

The three TV’s are showing photos all day. I have had several comments that our home resembles a bar now. But I love it.

I am so happy the room finally has purpose

One more photo from construction days – Bill gathered up all of the flashlights in the house for a battery check/redistribution. I have a secret to tell you – Bill likes flashlights.

More swimming and underwater photos! This time, we were at the boys’ friend Graham’s birthday party! Happy Birthday, Graham!

Brendan’s reaction time was a little delayed on the “1-2-3 Jump!”

I won’t lie, flips in to pools give me the anxiety goose-bumps. But Trevor is getting good at it.