Master: The Before Before. . .

So, before some of our before pictures was the real BEFORE picture. This is the pic we took of the room when we toured our FSBO house over a year ago. We only took one picture. Why? It was that bad. Mike kinda thought I was nuts to suggest its potential as our master. He'd prefer the guest bedroom which was a much easier re-do because it didn't start out so bad. However, the guest room is in the basement and the nursery is upstairs. So, I insisted it'd be glamorous after just a bit of work. Okay it was a lot more work than I thought. Here's a pic of the rough start we moved into:

By now, you've seen enough teaser afters to know that this room has seen major improvement. I just want to take this opportunity to outline just what we were faced with in this project. This was a daycare before it was our home. It was someone's home daycare but still, a daycare.

The entry room shows that it was the baby room with multiple cribs rolling on those hardwood floors. The other door housed a teenage boy who had to walk through the baby room and shut the door to have any space of his own. It was hardly big enough to call a bedroom (though they did in their listing) and with the door shut, closed off any natural light to the first room. The door, and much of the wall had to go: easy decision. However, when the wall was removed, you can see the floors changed. Why? The additional room was an addition (really you wasted time to add one an 8x10' room?) just 5 years after the house was built. Perhaps it was a porch at one time? Anyway, we still have to come up with a solution (which means cover-up) for that issue.

Then, you can see the massive shelves that were bolted into the walls in ways I never knew possible. The white one went the entire length of the space and the blue ones were replicated in yet another corner. It eventually came down to a sledge hammer to destroy the shelves before Mike revelaed and removed 3-4" screws to get it all out. We certainly had some patchwork ahead of us.

What you can't see clearly is the wallpaper border that was atop the sky blue glossy walls. It was a little something like this:

And UNDER that, contruction wallpaper border:

The bottom layer refused to be removed. It worked out because Mike insited on knocking out the walls anyway. The "addition" had drywall while the entry room still had lath and plaster and he refused to leave it that way with the two rooms as combined as we could get them. He wanted cohesion (how could I argue with such a design decision?). So that ballooned into the ceiling project as well. The ceilings were also made of two different materials so they got knocked down and drywalled, textured and painted. Are you beginning to see how this snowballed into a couple more months than anticipated?

Finally, we are so super duper close to moving in to our new space. New walls, ceiling, trim, baseboards, a new closet, new doors, new paint. . . I'm just decorating and trying to keep him motivated to move things in (since I'm not much help with lifting anymore). I hope to have final afters for you at month's end! There will be several tutorials to highlight projects as well. Be patient with me! Remember, I have a nursery to finish as well (and a baby to grow which has been draining my energy)!