Taking shape

When I first set foot into our Ugly Duckling I could 'see' before my inner eye what needed to be done to bring the house back to life: which walls needed to be opened up, which walls needed to be reconfigured to give the floor plan reason and usefulness and how we could make this all work beautifully. Seeing, really seeing all of these changes take place and come to life is incredibly and wonderfully rewarding.

This may be an old house built when 'cooking' didn't mean reheating a TV dinner in the microwave and 'entertaining' didn't require a footballfield-sized living-dining-den combo but it adapts to today's life just fine rolling with the punches and looking just as great in 2011 hip colors and art as it did 95 years ago in 1920s chic. I'm telling you, the Ugly Duckling is enjoying all the attention she's getting!

Anyways, there was never a doubt that the upstairs kitchen should become a Master Bathroom and Dressing area (aka walk-through close) turning the largest upstairs bedroom into a veritable Master suite (sweet!).

You've seen the Before with the dirty tile and blah cabinetry, the in-progress first with rotting OSB and then clean with rusty metal sheeting and finally the picture of the whole area covered in beautifully fresh plywood subflooring.

Last week, the wall separating the bathroom from the dressing area went up. Mr P welcomed me at the house with a huge smile and the magic sentence "Go, look at your wall". I darted upstairs and there it was, my wall!

[Wall in progress]

Here I am looking through the door from the Master bedroom into (front) the dressing area and the Master bath (back). There'll be a door in the center of the wall which swings open to the left so that the first thing you see is the clawfoot tub and the windows behind it. How very cool is this?! I called the husband who got quite a kick out of my excitement. I mean, how excited can you get over a wall? A whole lot, that's how much :o)

[In progress: Master Bathroom]

Here I'm peeking through my beautiful wall into the Master bathroom (the slightly wider open space between the studs will hold the door). To the right where you can see some damaged drywall we're going to have our vanity and our water closet as well as a built-in closet for towels and other assorted bathroom stuff. The clawfoot tub will go next to the window against the left wall with enough space between wall and tub for easy access and cleaning.

It's a nice sized room but it's not overly huge, and the lower ceilings keep it very cozy. The color scheme we're planning for this room is a very clean and crisp white with a little bit of grey and touches of black and with all the natural light from the two windows we can probably even have life plants in this room. Neat!