One Room Challenge Week 2: The Right Niche is Too Low!

I jumped the gun on this project a little – and now I’m glad I did. We have too many travel plans for our own good this fall, I have a lot of DIY work to do, and some other jobs were harder to coordinate than I would have expected.

First, I came to grips with the fact that off-white radiators would no longer look right once we repainted the off-white woodwork. I painted them myself. It took like 10 hours, plus about 45 minutes of help from Tito. (See? I’m no longer lying and saying 15.) He is not convinced that we were better off doing this part ourselves. Also, maybe the radiators give you an idea of what GLOSSY navy woodwork is gonna look like. What do you think? (Besides that we might want to hurry up and have central heat again.)

Next came custom jambs and sills on the windows. We replaced them ourselves, but the walls are so uneven that the jamb extensions have to be shaped like pie wedges. And so when the Irishman (my next door neighbor, a master carpenter with more personality than I can sometimes handle) told me he was available one day in mid-September, I jumped on it. We had a French friend staying with us who was shocked (and possibly disappointed) that our use of power tools at 7 on a Sunday morning did not get us arrested.

Now, does it make sense to have wood blinds up now? If you ask a builder, of course not. But sleeping in a room with naked windows was getting old.

Now, we were hoping to have the casings installed by now, too, but it took a few tries for the lumber yard to know where my order was and get it to a place where I was able to get it. Not to worry though; at long last they have arrived to one of the many wood piles in the living room.

But even without the casings up, the jamb extensions showed us where they will be. And that’s the baseline I needed to line up the bookcase niches. Time to cut open some drywall.

And when I got them cut out, my stomach dropped. The window headers are higher than I planned for 5 years ago, and the framing I built for the left niche was about an inch too low. And the block of drywall up there is holding up the attic insulation, so ripping everything out to raise it an inch was out of scope. But having the niches an inch lower than the window trim Will. Not. Do. Now, the bedroom door is about 10 inches low and this is fine. But an inch? That looks sloppy.

But Plan B wasn’t too hard to come up with. I lowered the niches another 3/4″, and now they’re just the right height to line up with a picture rail. That just leaves the small matter of getting moldings attached to a brick wall that’s barely harder than adobe.

I’ve got a little more spackling to do, but we’re pretty much ready to move on to woodwork! (I mean, I already have!)

Oh, and since it’s One Room Challenge season, you can go here to find lots more room makeovers.