Work in progress

Last week I gave you a glimpse of what I was working with at the Show House.  It was pretty grim.  Aside from the floor-to-90" stained and cracked wall tile, we had a rotten floor, and peeling plaster on the 90"-to-ceiling (135") remaining portion of the walls.  It took a few days to get my head around what had to be done to transform the space...

The entire first floor of the House is filled with incredible detail - stained glass windows, a mahogany library, wainscoting, latticed ceilings, and antique lighting.  My room is on the first floor in between the kitchen and the Junior League Show House office, and as said, it used to house a walk-in ice box and annex to the kitchen.  It is 8 feet wide by 18 feet long and has a 11'3" ceiling height.  Yes, it could be called challenging.

When the JLB gave me the room, they asked that it be a "lady's den".  To me, the word den is synonymous with cozy, so given my dimensions and existing materials in the space, I had to think long and hard about how to warm it up.  First, I knew that I had to lose the tile on the walls, but because this is a 150-year-old house, removing the wire mesh installation would be more work than my budget could handle.  Instead, I decided to cover it up and to give the room some architectural details consistent with other spaces throughout the house.  But even to cover it up (correctly) took a bit of carpentry and I am thankful to New England Property Contractors for knowing how to handle it.

The tiled casing around the doors and windows was removed, as well as the cap on the top of the wall tile.  These were replaced with 2x4s to give the room structure and a place to nail the new wood casing to.  The walls and ceiling were then strapped with lauan to cover the tile and accomodate a board-and-batten style application.

Here's how it went...