When Kim and I moved into our house in October, we had a number of projects before us. One of those was to turn an area of the upstairs from a kids’ bedroom into my home office. It looked easy enough (famous last words): there were two built-in beds, so I just had to remove the one remaining mattress and pull off the wooden facade that held the mattresses in. Oh ho ho. When I pulled off the first facade, I discovered quite the sturdily-built bed platform. Since we were just about to do the actual move, I put the office project on hold until I had more time to do it. Since then, I’ve had my desk set up in the middle of the room (the entire upstairs is one room, a converted attic), which has been fine, but it feels temporary and cluttered with all the unpacked boxes.
So this weekend I decided to finish the job. We spent all day yesterday demolishing the bed structures, discovering a swatch of dark tile (!!) in the middle. No way we were going to try to pull that up, so at the hardware store today we bought two sheets of 3/4-inch particle board to fill the gap where the beds were. We also bought four boxes of wood laminate flooring, foam underlayment, and some plastic spacers.
The immediate problem, of course, is that I drive a 1995 Mazda 626, and the particle board sheets were too big to fit into the car, even with the back seats folded down and the boards cut down to size. As we were trying to figure out how to attach the boards, a man named Jeb came up and asked if we were taking them far. We’re only a few miles from the store, so he offered to put them in his pickup and deliver them to our house! A few minutes later, our wood was unloaded and we were set to begin. He wouldn’t accept anything from me in return, so by way of thanks I want to pass along his kindness: Jeb runs JB Remodeling in Seattle – if you’re looking for some kitchen or bathroom remodel work, send me an email and I’ll give you his phone number. He’s a one-man outfit, does free estimates, and has kept busy over the past year even in this economy.
Now, I have a wood floor in my office (okay, laminate wood floor, but it’s not a very large space and it was easy to install, no glue or anything). Tomorrow I’ll paint, and the whole thing should be done in the middle of the week.
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 