The Pee Room Needs A New Name

This bedroom got its name before we even moved into the house.  It was not hard to choose a name since the room stuck like, well, pee.

At first we thought dogs were responsible for the smell but the neighbors said the dogs were not allowed in the house.  It must have been the previous owner's kids.

My wonderful brother has no sense of smell and he was nice enough to spend an entire day removing the carpet and scraping the padding off the floor.

 I sealed the floors and walls with Kilz but the stains bled right through.  That's when I discovered Zinsser 3-2-1 primer.  It will cover anything.  After getting everything sealed the smell finally went away and we used the room intermittently as a guest room.

After a year in the house we finally started work on the pee room and the adjacent disco room.  The old door into this room was at the end of the back hallway.

The room had an L shaped layout that has a lot of wasted space.

 We changed the layout to make the room smaller but it should not have an effect on usable space.  This required moving the doorway from the east wall to the north wall and framing in a new closet where the L-shaped potion of the room used to be.

Our other big framing change was to install the new window.  Although this addition was built in the 70's the windows are short and wide to match the main part of the house.  Our new windows are a foot taller so we had to lower the sill by a foot.

Once it was all framed in I finished the electrical work (we only had one outlet) and we hung sheetrock.  I had a lot of holes to patch.

After mud, tape, primer, texture and paint we finally had a room worth looking at.

The finishing touches really dress up the room.  Luke trimmed out the windows and installed the crown molding while I painted.  I love how the crown draws the eye up and makes this small bedroom a little more interesting.

We don't have installed the baseboard trim yet.  It's a sixty mile drive to the nearest Lowes so it will just have to wait.

There is one thing about this room that really drives me nuts.  Unfortunately it was my idea.  This is the power supply for the sprinkler system in the closet.

Our sprinkler controller is on the other side of this wall and Rainbird does not carry hardwired controllers.  Since our unit had to be plugged in I ran it through the wall and powered the controller from this outlet in the closet.  It's not as hidden as I would like but it's better than seeing that cord and adapter in the hallway.

Speaking of the hallway, it's only halfway done.  We'll be working on Luke's office this winter and the left wall will be changed to add a linen closet.  For now it looks a little strange.

We got a lot done this weekend and I have a lot to post this week, we'll just have to see if I can find the time to do so.