The NeverEnding Project.

It was about a year ago that Liz and I first started thinking seriously about building a kids’ play room in a convenient corner of the attic. When Joe and family decided to move here and stay with us until they could locate a place of their own, the project went into high gear. I thought it would be an easy project, but it turned out to be a major, huge, daunting, complicated, tedious, expensive, meticulous, and lengthy project. I came home from work day after day and worked in there until 1 or 2 in the morning. My body was slowly breaking down from it and by the time Joe’s family got here I could barely use my hands. The big, heavy, framing nailer was the worst. It really put a lot of pressure on my wrists. Here’s how it went.

· Phase 1: Rerouting wires and a/c ducts passing through the space. Many wires were too short to be lifted out of the way, so they had to have special handling: cut & splice, special passageway built into the room, etc.

· Phase 2: Framing and putting down a floor. I thought it would be a matter of laying plywood across the joists, but it turned out that the joists were all at different levels and had to be built up or cut down. Also, Phases 1 & 2 merged when I nailed a piece of plywood down and the nail penetrated the insulation of 3 out of the 4 wires in a duplex 120 volt cable. Fortunately I have a friend who is a licensed electrician and he was able to help me find and fix that little booboo. The ceiling didn’t leave enough room for a full-size door. We had to get the narrowest door available (24 inches) and I cut off the bottom. This made the door handle lower than normal, which made it better for kids to use. Even with that, there isn’t enough clearance and I solved that by making a jerry-rigged recess into the ceiling where the door needs to swing.

· Phase 3: Insulation. I hate putting up insulation because it is so itchy and irritating, so you have to bundle up and wear a respirator, which makes it unbearably hot and hard to move around. The good news here is that I noticed HD had some neat foil-covered bubble wrap. It doesn’t itch at all, and it made a huge difference in how hot it got in the attic. It’s a reflective barrier, rather than much in the way of insulation, so I still had to put up bats of fiberglass, but it was a pleasant start. Last summer was relatively cool through July, which helped a lot. It meant I could get the insulation in before it got unbearably hot.

· Phase 4: Sheetrock. We were running out of time, so Liz had one of her guys from work send out a sheetrock person, and sometimes 2. I had no idea that sheetrock guys were so specialized, but I expected this guy to help me hang sheetrock, then tape and bed and finish it all off. He kept telling me he wasn’t a sheetrock guy, he was a finish mudding guy. Where he did hang sheetrock he did a lousy job – worse than me by far. He didn’t like taping and mudding. When it came time to finish the surface he was great, but the costs were skyrocketing and he just wasn’t that much help. He was here for 2 weeks and we still weren’t done, so we finally told him to go away. That left us with the job about half done, but the front half of the space was sufficiently far along that Joe’s children could use the room.

· Phase 5: Paint and finish. We primed and painted the front half blue, and I got the electrical outlets ready for use, even though they were mostly messed up from the sheetrock guy. Joe helped us lay glued-down carpet squares when he was here. We put the toys in there and the kids loved it.

It was a delight to have Joe’s family living with us, even though we were a bit crowded even with the new room.

After Joe moved into his new house, we settled into a routine without worrying any more about the new room, but that back half still needed work. Angela’s planned visit next month spurred us back into action. Joe brought one of his mudding guys over and he helped with the sheetrocking. That worked great! We knocked the sheetrock off in 2 days. I ordered a new window for the dormer, because the old one was too small, single-pane, and broken. The back room actually went much smoother and it is almost done now. I bought oversize switchplate covers, and that solved some of the worse issues with the lousy sheetrock help from the first half. I still have some molding to install and the faux fence Liz is so excited about. It is cute. The only thing we haven’t been able to complete is the wall murals. That will have to remain for the future. Forgive me the tools and work paraphernalia in the photos, but we are still working.

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...>> This was taken from the closet into the back room that has never been inhabited. You can see the window dormer and the blackboard (magnetic, too).

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...>> This is from the back room into the front room, and you can see the fence. We only have this small section up, but it will go fast. The little door goes into Mom’s attic.

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...>> This view shows the door with the clearance groove into the ceiling. It’s an insulation issue, but it couldn’t be helped and still have enough door for an adult to walk in.

We are excited to have bunches of grandkids in here next month, and getting a chance to see the whole space fully utilized.