Bonus Room Update

I had no part in tearing apart the bonus room, and after seeing the filthy insulation that came out of that room, I'm glad that's how it worked out. The picture at right shows some of the bonus room debris that was blocking the stairs during the initial stages of our demolition. I'm not really sure how Sam got back downstairs after that, but it all seems to have worked out.





The second picture shows about the state the bonus room was in when we decided to leave it as an open loft. After seeing how much bigger the living room looked when the bonus room was all opened out like that, it wasn't a very tough decision.

After building the stairs, Ben spent the next few days framing out the loft. The picture at right looks through the loft, out toward the living room. Sam is standing in a little alcove, where we hope to build in some bookcases. A better view of the alcove is given in the next picture, which is from the vantage point of the stairs. If you're wondering why it looks so fuzzy, it's because we had just swept up the whole house in preparation for the plumbers, so there was quite a bit of dust in the air.

The last picture looks into the back of the bonus room. As Sam mentioned, we've been running into some minor space issues as the framing progresses, particularly when it comes to storage. We wandered about the house a bit yesterday looking for a place to put an extra closet, and decided that the best place was at the back of the bonus room, on either side of the back window. So we'd probably have two closets up there, separated by a bench seat under the window.

Now if only we could find solutions to these other minor issues:

• The way the half bathroom is configured, we need to find a very narrow sink in order to avoid obstructing the doorway. Very narrow. Like, one foot deep.
  
• Today we were trying to think of where to put a towel rack in the master bathroom. I imagine it will be pretty easy to put in a towel rack for the tub, but there's really not a great space for towels for the shower. We may need to put them on the shower door, or perhaps on the bathroom door.