Renovating a Cape Cod Cottage | Family Room | Installing Beadboard

Dear readers, my apologies for being so loose with my blogging schedule lately. It’s taken me longer than usual to catch-up with your emails and messages, and I’m sorry for that, but it’s been a whirlwind month and I’ve had so much on my mind that writing on here has taken a backseat. We’re about to start 3rd grade online, with all the anxiety that the new learning format entails, and there’s a lot to figure out right now. Our schedules look quite different this fall, don’t they? We’re all doing our best to navigate these uncertain times, working from home, learning and enjoying our time together the best we can so please bear with me while I regroup and figure out a new blogging routine. In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you what’s been on my mind (obsessively) over the last couple of weeks.

One of the exciting things for us right now is that we’re also in the middle of renovating our family room! We’re super excited to be doing some changes to our downstairs bedroom, transforming it into a multi-tasking space that will hopefully be a home office/home library/ family room and guest bedroom… At 11′ x 11′ I’d say that is a tall order and it’s taken some serious planning, patience, number-crunching and scheduling to make it happen. But it’s also been tons of fun! (It’s even nicer now that the plans are transforming into reality. ) I made this little to-scale model using elevation sketches and foam board and it was fun because it not only helped communicate some of the ides better, but it also helped me decide about the scale and position of things. I do know how to create a 3D model version in drafting software but trully nothing beats an actual 3D model you can touch, rotate and hold in your hands. What can I say, I am old-school, all the way…

The progress has been very slow so far, but steady, and it looks like we’re days away from having new windows in, and I can almost see the finish line. So instead of pretty pictures, I wanted to invite you along and share our progress as we check things off of our to-dos list.

The bead board went up on two of the four walls, and I love it! (The other two walls still await major repairs to happen during the next couple of weeks.) We chose wider beads that come in 4’x8′ sheets from Lowes. Wood would have been nice but it would have punched an unnecessary hole in our renovation budget. If this would have been the living room, we’d gone for wooden boards, yes, but in here they’ll be hidden behind rows of books anyway. The frames for our built-in bookcases are being built & installed next. (The blue TV stand is on its way out. And so is the ginormous TV. Both are comfortably relocating to the basement. ) Next come the shelves and the trim.

And speaking of the TV, we did something so simple yet so effective that I must share. The trick really is a game-changer for our tiny room and soon-to-be-open shelving, and it was my clever husband’s genius idea: We’re doing floor to ceiling built-in shelves with a TV slot and I was dreading the thought of cables, modem and TV box cluttering the shelves and being out in the open. So instead, my husband thought of placing the cable TV and modem in the hallway closet, which is just a hollow wall away, right behind the TV. No more ugly cables and blinking blue lights to look at, and I can’t tell you how happy this change has made me! (Disproportionately happy!) 

The other change was a bit more challenging to implement but last week our contractors relocated the washer and dryer from the family room closet (seen above, now decorated with a handsome ladder that makes our ceilings look higher, and a nifty red compressor for a nice pop of color) down to the basement. There were some plumbing issues regarding the change (there always are) that have suspended the progress for about a week but we are now (hopefully, knock-on-wood) back on track.

Yesterday we got confirmation that our new windows are here, ready for pickup, and I am giddy with excitement! The plan is to have them in before Christmas (haha) and I’ll share more when things start to shape up. Thanks for making it to the end! Take care and stay well!