Nursery Construction

As you may already know we are expecting a little surprise this summer and Lewie has been hard at work building a nursery.  When we moved into this house it only had one bedroom:  ours.  Our house is actually two stories.  The first is at ground level and we call it the basement, which is where my crafting room is, the laundry room and then a huge room that is unfinished.  The second floor is the living floor which consists of a very large room that is an open kitchen, fireplace nook, dinning room and living room.  This big room opens out onto a small deck in the back.  The other room on the second floor is our bedroom/bathroom/closet.  Eventually, the plan is to redo the basement into the bedrooms and make our current bedroom upstairs the living room.  So, in our rush to make a room ready for the baby Lewie built a pantry off the kitchen that is about 6.5x7.5.  So someday when we have the living room, dinning room, and kitchen upstairs we'll have a nice walk-in pantry which will be great for all of our canning supplies which right now are stored in several different places.  In the meantime though it will be the nursery right by our bedroom.  I know that when she's older she'll be like, "You made me sleep in the pantry?!" but it will make for a good story.  I'm so lucky that I married a genuine handyman who can just throw up a room like a professional.  Although I wish I did, I don't know the first thing about construction but for him it's like it comes naturally.  Every weekend the room gets more complete and I get more excited about meeting our daughter.  Here are some photos so far:

The frame work for the nursery

Drywall and installation going up

Mudding the drywall

As an added bonus we decided to take out the faux fireplace that had a propane heater in it and discovered about 8 more feet of usable space behind it - it even has hardwood floor!  We bought a great little wood burner off Craigslist and have decided to build a small corner wood burner area with tiles in the same spot.  So, while we are taking away from the room with the nursery, we gained space on the other side of the room with the fireplace being torn down.  It's important to us to be as off the grid as possible so a wood burner was the way to go - plus we are surround by free fuel, our woods!  Hopefully this will help with the bills this next winter and if the electricity ever goes out as least we can still cook and be warm.  Here is a look at the hidden room behind the fireplace:

Hidden room behind fireplace

Where the painted drywall begins is where there was a wall with a fireplace that closed off that extra 8 feet behind it.  As progress continues on both projects I will post more pictures.