Reading the Room....
One of the worst rooms in the house, condition-wise, was a small awkward room at the front of the house. This room has one of the two street facing windows in it, so it had plenty of natural light.
What it also had was ugly laminate cabinets, fake wood floors, and a very moldy wall.
The room is long and narrow. It is also tall (11 ft ceiling), which left me in a design dilemma. We couldn’t knock the interior wall down because there would be no benefit. The room opens to a hallway. I didn’t want the space to go to waste, so I needed to find a use for the room, and it wasn’t going to be with laminate cabinets and floors.
The moldy wall had to be dealt with before anything could be done in the room. We had inspectors (more than one) look at the wall to see where the leaks were coming from and then repaired those issues. Thankfully, the stucco itself was fine. The roofing wasn’t originally installed correctly, so when replacing our roof, we had them fix the issues pointed out by the inspectors.
After those issues were addressed, the room sat untouched for months as we had bigger priorities (bathrooms, kitchen, bedrooms, etc.). It also gave us time to make sure the water issues were properly fixed. Thankfully, they were.
We had the same wood flooring that was installed in the living room and dining room put in this room as well. We had the interior wall rebuilt (sans the mold). We also had the room painted the same blue that is elsewhere in the home.
The bones of the room were then ready.
I’ve always wanted a library with a ladder. At our old house, we had the library, but the built-in shelves were too deep for a ladder. I decided to make this little weird room into a reading room. Richard built a fabulous, custom 11ft shelving unit which was designed to have a ladder attached to it. Jeff surprised me (kind of) with a library ladder for Christmas which I painted, and he installed.
The problem was that the rod came in 4 ft or 6 ft sections. We had to choose the 6ft because the 4 ft would be way too short. Our wall was just shy of 6 feet, so installation was interesting. As a matter of fact, it was rage inducing (for Jeff) and required patching and painting the walls. Jeff said some words….
Oh, who am I kidding…. Jeff said A LOT of words.
His aggravation was worth it. The ladder looks wonderful, and I love it. I am assured by Zachary that it works well too. It wasn’t by accident that I had him put his books at the top of the shelving unit. I’m not shimmying up that thing any time soon.
I purchased a comfy chair and side table to make a tucked-away reading spot. I also purchased posters with a reading theme and had Jeff hang them.
I ordered a large shade for the room in the same blue color as the walls. It makes the room extra cozy and keeps the neighbors from staring in at you while you’re reading. (Fishbowl anyone?) I left the top portion of the windows open like I did in the living room for natural light.
Filling the shelves took several weeks as I faffed about with different themed shelves. I like how they turned out. My favorite books are within reach so I can pull one off the shelf and read a bit when I get some free time…not that I have had much of that.
We’ve decided to call the room a “reading room” instead of a library because Zach said we didn’t have enough bookshelves to call it a library. I suppose since he’s the professional writer, I’ll concede the point, but I DO have a “library” ladder, and that’s what counts.
All in all, I’d say I did a pretty decent job of “reading the room….”
