Now that the outside skin of the house – the siding and all the windows but one have been replaced and upgraded, the time has come to do some work this year on the inside – specifically the front bedroom, a space approximately 11 x 11, with a double window facing to the front of the house. This has been the Daughter Unit’s bedroom since we moved in, in the spring of 1995, and eventually it will be my home office/work room and library. However, this spring, it will also become a nursery in addition to being a bedroom – and this will require almost a complete revamping. The vintage double bed (which the Daughter Unit bought for a song at an estate sale in the neighborhood a couple of years ago, along with a matching chest of drawers and dresser will have to be disassembled and moved to the garage and replaced with a single vintage-style twin (gotten for a couple of verses of good review through Amazon Vine) and a small crib for my coming grandson, Jamie (full name James Alexander Page Hayden, who will make his debut into the world around the end of May. The C-section is all but scheduled, so the Daughter Unit has that going for her.)

Well, as long as we’re swapping around furniture, what better time to repaint the walls, cover the ghastly popcorn texture on the ceiling and put down nice vinyl flooring? The company who did the new windows still owes us the replacement French door, and as part of that element, we’re going to install the same kind of shelves between the wall studs that we did in the hallway. It’s another small space, so why not take full advantage of that three and a half inches of space otherwise wasted? I already have a new ceiling-fan/light fixture (again, Amazon Vine) and we can reuse the lengths of shelving previously installed along that wall, plus the stray lengths of trim and baseboard left over from previous projects so … we started on that today, after patching a great many small holes in the wallboard. The Daughter Unit favored a pretty and neutral gray for the walls – which so far seems to have more of a pale blue hint to it. This will be accented by ice-white trim on the closet door and surrounds, the baseboards, ceiling and cornice, and vinyl flooring with a likewise grey finish. I think this will be the last home reno project for the year – aside from messing about in the garden, I will be paying the bills for it all over the next couple of years.

At least now the outside of the house is right and tight, and essentially sound-proofed, when the windows are closed. No more leaking windows and rotting window and door trim. And I cannot say how marvelous it is to have a sliding patio door that opens and closes without the use of full-body strength and a crowbar.