The Third Floor

As soon as virtual school was out this year I went to town working on my house.

My schedule during virtual school was too full to commit to working on big projects. I learned that lesson with the cabinet. Working late all weekend and feeling terrible on Monday for home school was not a good idea. So I backed way off on the projects. My school schedule was pretty full. I planned, prepped, shot, edited, and uploaded four videos a week to YouTube for my art students. Then I had to be available in the mornings for questions from students. During that time I was overseeing my own kids schoolwork as well. During lunch we worked on life skills. Then I was able to work on my art videos. They are on YouTube at: Mrs. Evans Arty Party

Anyway, I realized that I had a perfect window to work on the last room on the third floor. There is no air conditioning in this room and it is sweltering up there in the summer. There is no heat anywhere on that floor so working over Christmas break wasn’t an option either. The project was way too big for weekends or smaller breaks. It got put off for years, even though the previous owner had bought all the materials and had hired someone who had put the drywall up.

This room, like the other two is incredibly big. The walls are shiplap with ancient wallpaper over. There is lots of water damage from leaky chimney flashing and valleys on the roof. The roof is sound again (and has been for a long time), but the damage was easier covered by drywall. The wallpaper is still under the drywall, so if anyone ever takes it down there will be evidence of what it did look like.

Here is a map so you don’t get lost!

When we moved in in 2012 this dark green room was the only finished room.

This is it’s twin room next door with its twin matching dormer window. This is all water damage. My best guess as to the original use of these rooms would have been nurseries. We have an odd layout of bedrooms on the second floor including what was a second-floor office, so to have these as nurseries for the four original children makes the best sense. One was probably a playroom or day nursery, and one was probably a night nursery or sleeping room.

It was like this when we moved in. Dry-walled and halfway taped and bedded. My poor mother and I worked our butts off one spring break to finish this room. It took way longer than I thought it would. We had to finish the taping, skim-coating (I wanted it smooth like plaster), painting, and trim painting. Then the floor had to be cleaned and over 300 carpet tacks removed.

Here it is with new paint and all done! It was a playroom for awhile, but it was just too hot or cold up here a lot of the time.

Later, we cleaned it out, moved the toys downstairs to the kids’ rooms and made this a guest room.

But I did keep my vintage Fisher-Price Little People up here. By this time my kids were too old for these toys. We put the older toys from the playroom in their rooms and moved these toys up here. We still play with these sometimes! (My favorite sets, like the castle, are in my studio.)

There was one room left to finish. I think it had been a game room at some time because there was a rug painted on the floor, but the original family had a pool table in the dark green room. There is a lot of damage here too.

Again, there is wallpaper over the ship-lap walls. As much as I can guess from history and similar house layouts, this room might have been a servant’s room, although I’m pretty sure we have a servant’s room on the second floor at the back of the house.

My job was to tape and bed all the drywall joins, (my sweet DD filled all the screw-holes), sand and skim-coat those joins, and attempt to make the drywall look like plaster. So no texture!  This takes a ton of time and it is really hard to do! I went through 12 gallons of joint compound!

After four days of working on this I was beginning to feel like I was in a “Flowers in the Attic” remake! I still had to paint and care for the floor! At least I had good weather (cool and rainy) and some great podcasts (My Favorite Murder Minisodes, 13 O’Clock, and Crime Junkie) that I could listen to since the kids weren’t up here with me (they are all NSWF).

And here it is! All done except the floor! Later I came back and mopped it three times and waxed it. I also had to finish the trim in the tiny pass-through from this room to the light green room.

I’m so glad it’s done! It only took 8 years! Lol But seriously it feels good to have this buttoned up. My sweet DD and I also de-cluttered two car-fulls of donations to the Goodwill and filled our big recycling bin with papers from this room! Yay!

We are wanting to put a ping-pong table up here! Oh, and I am so thankful to the original owner who had bought all the paint and tools to finish this room. The paint alone would have cost me almost $200. It took 4 gallons for the walls and 2 for the trim! And, most importantly, thank God the paint was still good! The 5 gallon buckets had never been opened, but they had sat on this hot third floor since before we moved in. I also have enough trim paint to redo the trim in the second-floor hall which desperately needs it!

Heavenly, and done just in time. We had a heat wave right as I was finishing up!

Sweet, airy, white rooms in the tree-tops to you from Kansas Street,

-Jaime