The Bonus Room is the room directly over the garage. Originally it was supposed to be finished when the house was built, but cost considerations warranted putting it off. The room was going to be Gerry's music studio, but after the train room and basement bedroom were finished, it became apparent that that would be impractical. So we decided to make it Renay's Quilting Studio, thereby freeing up the upstairs guest bedroom.
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Here's the way the Bonus Room looked in November, 1999, before we moved in. We used it to house all the stuff that had come out of the outside storage unit. |
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And here's that same view in April, after cleaning the room, just before I started the work. (April, 2001) |
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(Just for comparison's sake, here's that same view after the room was finished.) (September, 2001) |
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Here's one of the alcoves under the roof dormers. (April, 2001) |
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We decided to use some of the otherwise-wasted space on both sides of the room as fabric storage bays. These are 2-feet wide, by 3-feet deep, by 4-feet high. To use even more of the wasted space, I talked Renay into letting me build bookcases above each bin. It turned out to be an insulation and drywall nightmare, but in the end it was worthwhile. (April, 2001) |
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Electricity came next. All told, I added 15 outlets, 8 ceiling lights, 2 track light strips, and a ceiling fan. (May, 2001) |
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Ok, the rafters were 24-inches apart, not 16-inches like normal walls. The drywall which had been pre-delivered to the room was 1/2-inch. That meant I had to add 2x2s to the ceiling to keep the drywall from sagging. Doing this took most evenings and weekends in the month of May. (May, 2001) |
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The corners of the dormers and the main room were particularly tricky because the carpentry hadn't been finished to accommodate sheetrocking. I had to re-engineer the corners and also add framing to the ceiling. (May, 2001) |
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Because of the carpentry, I had a devil of a time trying to figure out the geometry of the ceiling sheetrock. At one point I strung masking tape between the rafters to help me visualize exactly where I needed to add framing. (May, 2001) |
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I spent my week vacation in June installing the heating/air conditioning ducts. First I ran a 10-inch duct through the garage, split it off into two 8-inch ducts... |
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ran them around the perimeters of the rafters (this is a view of the garage ceiling), and... |
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finally into the side walls of the dormers. This job was a complete pain in the butt, since there was no room to maneuver in the rafters. (June, 2001) |
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The only professionals we hired were the insulators. Because the garage ceiling wasn't properly vented, the insulators had to spray a 2-inch layer of expanding foam on the inside of the roof sheathing, then blow in fiberglas into all the voids. The cost was about half the entire price of finishing the room. Here's the foam, before the blown-in fiberglas. |
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We then spent a week in July
hanging the sheetrock, and another two weeks mudding, taping, and
sanding. Then, of course, there was priming and painting to
do. These were the longest weeks of the project, and it seemed
like it would never get finished.
Here's Renay just after we hung the first piece of sheetrock on the ceiling. |
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It took two days just to get the sheetrock on the ceiling. |
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We knew we were making progress when we started laying the floor tiles... all 455 of them. Renay chose this checkerboard pattern. (August, 2001) |
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Finally in August we bought the trim and painted it with the sprayer, outside on the front lawn. The display looked like modern art. (August, 2001) |
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And here's the finished room. Renay bought roll-around basket units for her fabric storage, which makes a great colorful effect in the storage bays. We then found two roll-around tables at a used office furniture store (that's Phyllis inspecting them). (August, 2001) |
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From mid-April to the end of August... a huge project that turned out great! |
