We bought our 1928 bungalow home four years ago with the entire upstairs level gutted for remodel. Due to many bumps and babies being born it took us years to even start our first room renovation. That and the fact that we are not handy people and have NEVER renovated a room before. In fact neither my husband or I have ever even helped someone renovate a room or have ever done anything handy like before. We were completely out of our depths.
So we needed to buy some tools.
Many tools. For the first few years we just gave each other different kinds of saws and hand tools as christmas and birthday gifts to stock up for our big DIY day.
So how did we turn this into this with no idea what we were doing?
Lots of friends, friendly advice and thousands of hours watching instructional YouTube videos.
Things we got professionals to do:
Electrical
Carpet Installation
Cutting Doors to Size
Things a friend helped us get started on:
Drywall
Framing New
Vaulted Ceiling
Things we did ourselves:
Insulation
Mudding & Taping
Wall Texture
Paneling
Wood Trim & Details
Painting
Outlet Installation
Fan Installation
Hanging Doors
The biggest and most time consuming job was learning how to do drywall. There are a lot of steps to installing drywall in a room. My brother helped for a few days to get us started and then he had to go back home out of state so we were on our own to figure out the rest. We watched a lot of youtube videos at this point and found a gold mind with Construction Coach Youtube Videos. They were by far our favorite and explained things in detail that anyone would be able to understand.
Dry wall is like putting together a heavy jigsaw puzzle. You will develop lots of arm strength from it. Also you will need at least two people to put dry wall up. This is not a solo project.
Tip: Texture hides a lot of dry wall mistakes.
We did the top half texture and the bottom half paneling for a little more custom detail and character. When adding texture with mud it takes a lot more than you think. We used two full boxes of dry wall mud just for the top half and ceiling. Good thing its fairly cheap.
Figuring out what order to put the paneling up was a super brain teaser. Next time we will be doing it a little differently.
Tip: Put your molding and trim on first than add the paneling inside your molding.
Then you can caulk your seams to make it look… seamless.
The molding and trim was actually one of the easiest things we did in this boys room renovation. We just used a chop saw to cut the angles and length. We did not have a nail gun for this entire project. Everything is hand nailed or screwed in. We also used a ton of liquid nails for extra measure. The trim adds so much detail and really brings the whole craftsman style to the room.
Paint sure makes all the difference.
We had a professional put in the new electrical work and the electrical boxes but we had to install the actual outlets into the electrical boxes and we had to install the fan ourselves. Which was a little tricky since we had never done it before. But after a bunch of tries it started working.
We picked the Hampton Bay Ceiling fan because of the craftsman like detail on the fan blades and the modern touch of the light cover. Plus its exactly the right colors with the oiled bronze and dark wood stain. The dark against the light gray ceiling helps it to pop.
Here is a little sneak peek of the upcoming room reveal! We are so excited with how my sons room is coming together. The full room reveal is coming up in an upcoming blog post. So stay tuned.
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