Third Floor Bedroom

In this second-story apartment, there is a third-floor bedroom in the finished attic. I absolutely love finished attics, and have grand dreams and elaborate hypothetical floor plans for my own large, steep-roofed (high slanted ceilings) unfinished attic. So, as you can imagine, I loved the idea of this apartment having an attic bedroom. In the first week after buying the building, we went through to start learning about it, finding out what had been done when and where, etc. Unfortunately, we discovered that, in addition to this bedroom not having an open-able window (it was a hole, with a piece of plexiglass held over it by spray foam insulation) it also had no insulation and no ventilation. So, not only would this bedroom be perpetually cold in the winter, it would also be absolutely unbearably hot in the summer. Completely unacceptable. And thus we added many months, much money, and labor that we had not anticipated to the project.




So, we tore it all up, stripped everything down to the studs. We added rafter ventilation channels to the underside of the roof and then insulation. We took out the old closet and added a new large walk-in closet. Dad removed a large beam at the front of the house, and added new supports to create a beautiful angled architectural detail around the window, effectively opening it up to let natural light flow into the room. We lowered the ceiling to 9 feet and insulated it thoroughly. New electrical outlets were installed every few feet, new switches, a new light fixture wired in to light the stairs with a three-way switch at the top and the bottom. And then we hung 5/8"-thick drywall.



My dad's brother came and finished the drywall and in exactly one week, we primed, painted, installed fixtures and electrical covers, laid flooring, installed and painted all the base trim and window and door casement, and constructed a removable "railing" by the stairs for safety when it's in, and for convenience in moving furniture in and out when it's not.



I found the wood laminate flooring at Lumber Liquidators, and paid $1.99/sq ft for it, making it the most expensive flooring in the apartment (we got great deals on the luxury vinyl tile downstairs, and the refinished floors are really fairly cheap when you do the work yourself.) It was MUCH harder to install than we expected but we finally worked out a good system about 1/4 of the way through.

This door is a temporary solution to a special order door that did not come in on time. The door that is ordered is a horizontal five-panel design that matches the time period of the house and the other four doors installed in the apartment. For the other four (bathroom and 3 bedroom doors), I purchased only the slab, primed to paint, and cut the notches for the hinges and drilled for the doorknobs myself, in order to match the prior-installed frames. This door pictured leads to an unfinished portion of the attic that houses the furnace for this apartment. Because it is an unfinished space, I ordered a pre-hung door to fit snugly in the frame and not allow air through. It is filled instead of hollow-core, and thicker than standard, and designed also to stop sound traveling through. When this door is installed, there will also be a threshold at the bottom to close that gap.

Also pictured is the wall air conditioner. Because there is no central air, and in this room, no window suitable to install a window a/c, we put a small unit into the wall, to be vented into the attic.




The "open-air" walk-in closet is divided off from the main room by a new wall that we added. We installed white wire shelving here.

And, so as not to be redundant, the final pictures of the upstairs bedroom can be viewed in this post.

and... Finished!

So, a few weeks ago, we got to a point in the apartment renovation where it seemed that one could see what it was going to look like, so I cleaned it up, advertised it, and had an overwhelmingly good response within just a couple days. Soon after, I signed a lease with a new tenant, and have been working long hours since then to finish the apartment by our deadline (tenant move-in date). Dad has been out of town for work, and arrived back a week before the deadline, and took the entire week off to spend long hours with me over there, finishing everything up. Friday, we finished only a few hours late, and handed the keys over to our new tenant. Here are some of the finished results:




All of our stuff waiting at the door to be moved out



a few final touches-- This is the main living/dining space, with refinished floors



Kitchen with new (used) appliances.



upstairs (third floor) bedroom, showing the track for the slide-in railing by the stairs. Behind the wall is the walk-in closet, and through the door is the unfinished furnace room. New wood laminate floors.



upstairs bedroom again, newly re-constructed window alcove, ceiling fan. (and omg, I love the floors!)

MORE TO COME!