man room- check!

The time has come to celebrate with my blog world (yep, all 3 of you). THE MAN ROOM IS COMPLETE! [ok... not completely complete. There are some touch-ups to work on and several doors to trim and hang, but it is usable now!]

I can't even remember (and I'm too lazy to go back and look) if I prefaced this project adequately. If you're thinking "what is she talking about?" then I probably didn't. I'll start at the beginning. (Disclaimer: This is going to be a loooong post, full of pictures of construction and my cute husband. If you don't want to look at them, you don't have to, but it's my blog and I'm pretty excited about it.)

When we bought our house, the space above our 2 car garage was an unfinished attic. You walked through the room that we had made an office/catch all room, through a mini door into the large space. It was awesome for storage because we didn't have much elsewhere in the house. Half of it (the left side) had a plywood floor and the other half just had the insulation and the beams above the garage. There was a large beam running through the center of the floor (about 10" high) and cross beams like a big "X" up to the ceiling (man, this is kind of boring... sorry if you don't care about the specifics... fast forward to the pics). I just thought it would be great storage space for... forever. David, however, had a vision from day one:

Sadly, this is the only "before" picture I really have. This is before we even closed on the house- David was already excited about the possibilities!

Before I go any further, I need to acknowledge the cast of characters:

• David
• David's vision, hard work and determination
• Keith
• Keith's expertise
• Dan Lapinski (David's boss at Gordon Biersch- and his friend)
• Lots of Dan's tools
• Jack (another guy from work)
• Raynolds, Mattearley, the Bryant boys and any other people who stopped by our house at a time that David needed help carrying things upstairs
• Harley (moral support, you know)

I know David would want those people thanked because he could not have done this project without lots of help (namely from Keith and Dan).

Moving on...

This is the right side, and I guess it is a pretty good "before" shot. Just getting started... carrying supplies in...

measuring, measuring, measuring

Installing the air flow panels and insulation. Though I didn't take a "before" picture that was actually after we were all moved in, you can see in this picture that we had installed several rods for hanging things along the sides. In fact, we had sufficiently filled the left side of this storage room up with junk. When we decided that the "man room project" was going to be a reality, we got to cleaning out and reorganizing. It is so nice not to have lots of storage space that just collects junk!

Widening the door. Since this was just an attic space, it had a teeny weeny door. They had to widen it to we'll be able to get stuff through it. Obviously.

Like I mentioned, there was a giant beam sticking up in the middle of the room. When they built our house they never intended for this to be a finished room, or they would have dropped this beam down into the garage (now wouldn't that have been nice?). SO, that meant that the floor had to be raised about 8".

Tons of wood. Tons and tons. Lots of measurements. Notice that we saved the sides of the room for storage. It actually works really well. I bet all that stuff is so dusty now! Dusty has become a part of our family, in fact. We hate him.

Dan measuring the ceiling beams.

The finished floor! There is a step up into the room, and a closet (my favorite part!) to the left.

David and Matt hanging the light fixtures.

Keith building the closet.

Tons of insulation- completed.

Drywall going up!

Raynolds only photo appearance. Thanks, RayRay. Oh, and thanks for your unintentional donation of those black gloves. We've used them a lot.

Measuring, cutting. Measuring, hanging. Yuck!

Drywall done!

Proud David! We had someone do the mudding and taping part of the drywall to ensure that it would look professional when it was done.

I'm a thug painter. What?

Painting trim.

Priming done.

Ceiling done.

Taping.

Being cute and blending in.Paint.

More paint.

Paint done! (PS- there was dust [go figure] on my camera lens apparently. the paint is fine, really it is.)

Mini door for the storage area. Boys excited about pictures.

Outlet covers on. Baseboards on.

Carpet done! It went in yesterday, just after David stepped on a nail :(. Poor guy has been so excited about this day finally being here and he spent all of it in pain! He was a trooper though... we got everything moved in:

the front of the room

the back of the room

It's amazing how you can fill an empty room with junk in a matter of minutes!

We're shopping for a couch and David is always shopping for a tv. When those two purchases are made, we'll have this room looking complete!! The futon (which was my 16th birthday present) will stay and provide extra sleeping space when we have a house full of guests (COME VISIT)!

I am SO SO proud of David! He said from the beginning that this project will make him more proud than completing college, and I think he'd hold true to that now. He worked so hard and learned so much about what goes into building a complete room! I'm proud of you, babe! You ROCK!

PS- If you don't have plans for football season, know that you'll be able to find David right here every weekend and you're welcome to join him :)