Now that’s a minimalist bedroom

I reached a real milestone this week. All the bagged plaster is gone! That doesn’t mean I won’t find bits of it here and there, but I’m officially done hauling it out. And to celebrate, I vacuumed my car. I’ve also finished taking out the flooring in the back bedroom. All of it.

Those boards are just sitting there, in case you were wondering, and yes, one of them is a door.

This work was tricky because the ceiling in the upstairs hall is not coming out, and it’s attached to framing that was held up by the old wall into this bedroom, and that wall had to come out to get the flooring out. So we had to partially frame the new wall about 14 inches over from the old one and tear out the old flooring and wall framing simultaneously. That was kind of a pain but on the bright side, now we can see right where the wall is going to go. Have a look! We’re looking into a closet right now, so the walls will look weird with boxes around all those pipes, but it won’t matter.

That window is partially behind the wall, so it has to go. But don’t shed any tears for it; it wasn’t installed right and it doesn’t close. And I’m massively enlarging the windows at the other end of this room where they’ll be more practical anyway.

Now outside of the back bedroom I’ve made some progress, too. I cleaned the kitchen, and finally have pictures that will do all 4 former wallpapers justice!

It may be tough to see, but we’ve got more of the kitschy 50’s kitchen paper, this time with cooking grease all over it, but we also have a kitschy Dutch paper, an abstract googie geometric pattern, and a very 1970’s floral. On top of all that is another paper that I can’t identify because it’s been painted blue. and lots of the plastic tile that I’ve found traces of before.

And finally, I’ve put and end to my comical anxiety about choosing bathroom tile. I reached an impasse even though I don’t think I’ll end up caring that much what I get. But I wanted whatever I got to be nice enough that I’d never regret putting it in. In the end I turned to craigslist, and got an excellent price on fancy handmade tiles, and I grabbed them. I don’t think this was the direction I was going to go with, but I like it! The white penny tiles (also cheap on craigslist) are for the floor, and the blue goes on the walls around the tub, and I think I’ll use them for a 6 inch baseboard in the rest of the room. So there we are, I’m done choosing things for the bathroom! I’ll stick with bare bulb closet fixtures above the vanities for now because I’m just done picking things out.