Sunday, June 13, 2010

The attic conversion, before and after

Now that the workers are done and have turned the attic over to us for finishing, I thought I'd share some before and after photos. They're not exact matches, but they're close enough for French government work. What the before photos don't show is the attic floor covered with about an inch of dust, dirt, feathers, cardboard, carpet, and other debris that we cleaned out before I started taking pictures.

This is looking north. In the before photo, the window is open so it looks a little bigger that it actually is. It's the same window in both photos. The floor is not the same, however. The old floor was wide planks set directly over the joists. They are still there, but there's a layer of builder's felt, a layer of OSB (oriented strand board), and the pine finish floor over all of that.

This is the view looking northwest. You can see how we had the storage closets built into the eaves and where the Velux window was installed on the sloping roof. The chimney you see here comes up from the living room fireplace.

Here we are looking to the southeast. In the before photo you can see the old hatch and ladder access on the lower right. That's now gone, replaced by the stairwell in the center. The chimney on the left comes up from the kitchen exhaust fan; the one on the right from the boiler in the utility room two floors below.

Looking southwest, and the boiler's chimney is completely boxed in with the niche and a closet, and the second Velux attic window is in place. You can see a bare light bulb in the before and after photos, but before, it was attached to the beam. In the after photos, the new bulb is hanging from a wire over the stairwell. We'll put a fixture up there after we paint.

So that's pretty much it. We've now got to get moving on varnishing the wood floor and the stairs. After that we'll be able to sand, prime, and paint the walls. We'll be posting photos of that process as we go along.

14 comments:

  1. With the yard work — potager, lawn mowing and hedge clipping — and the attic work or should I say the new room, your future looks pretty busy!

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  2. CHM left out your most time-consuming activity...sitting in the summer sun with a nice chilled bottle of rosé to be consumed.

    Estimated time for upstairs completion; November 15.

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  3. Love the niche and how the closets worked out.

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  4. It's coming along nicely. I can't wait til I can move in.

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  5. Absolutely lovely! Now the work begins!

    BettyAnn

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  6. Bill, ha ha ha. Actually, we'll be pretty happy if most of the work is done by November, before the heating season starts. As we all know, a house is never finished...

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  7. Just a suggestion, start from the top down, and do the floors very, very last. Freshly varnished floors get dirty and scratched very easily.

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  8. That's a lot of space. You could move everything up there and rent out the downstairs.

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  9. You two have such a great work ethic... you just attack and plug away at the task until it's done (I'm thinking also of Ken's post today,too).

    Judy

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  10. congratulations !
    It looks good
    Please tell me how the ghost likes it.

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  11. Wow!
    What a perfect space!
    Brilliant!

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  12. chm, très busy!

    bill, lol!

    tornwordo, we're pretty happy so far.

    evelyn, thanks!

    bettyann, for us, yes.

    anon, check.

    starman, there's no bathroom upstairs (yet).

    judy, but we don't extend ourselves. Slow and steady. ;)

    michael, I'll try, but he/she never tells me anything. Not even boo.

    stephen, now if only I could get your husband to decorate!

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  13. WOW!! Here's to progress!! Can't wait to see it completed!

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