House in Progress: Attic to Aerie

I just spent the better part of two days cleaning my 10-year-old daughter's room. You read that right -- two days. I love her dearly, but oh my god that girl is a slob. I found food under her bed that I'm pretty sure has been there since last summer.

Anyway, since I finally got the room presentable, I thought I'd take a few snaps to document the achievement. (Trust me, the room has never been this clean, nor is it likely to ever be this clean again. I told Laurel that she's not allowed back up there until we're back from our house-swapping vacation, and I was only half joking.) It's also the first chance I've had to document our completed attic renovation since it was finished two years ago. Forgive me -- the room has been a pigsty since the day she moved in.

When we first looked at this circa-1939 house, the attic was just a big, raw space. The previous owner had put in windows and skylights in the hope of eventually turning it into a master bedroom, but had stopped there. Nick and I knew we needed to finish the conversion to make the house workable for our family, but also knew that it wasn't an ideal space for our master bedroom. (I'm 5'10" and Nick is 6'2", and much of the space isn't suited to anyone over 4'8" without raising the roof and adding all kinds of dormers -- an expense we were in no financial position take on at that point.)

Our then-7-year-old daughter -- who along with her big brother had furiously resisted every Sunday open house we'd dragged her to during the year we'd actively been looking for a new place to call home -- climbed the stairs to the attic, took one look around at the dark and dusty space, and happily declared it "my future bedroom and art studio." The girl has vision, and who were we to argue?

As I said, though, the space was extremely raw and a bit awkward. The "walls" were merely the slanted underside of the roof and consisted of nothing more than insulation stuffed between ceiling joists. The ceiling sloped straight down to the floor, so while the overall space looked huge, a good portion of it was only a few feet tall.

About half of the attic floor was raised up several feet to accommodate the half-level below, and there was no actual floor there -- just more insulation stuffed between exposed floor joists. (I made the mistake one day of stepping between the joists instead of on them, and accidentally put the better part of my leg through lath and plaster into the room below.) The Douglas Fir floor in the rest of the attic was orangey and very distressed. One part of the floor sloped at a 30-degree angle, following the line of the vaulted ceiling below. The drop from the upper level of the attic around the steep stairwell was precarious.

What's more, dangerously low ceiling ties and roof supports were scattered all over the attic, making it difficult to walk more than a few feet in some areas without hitting one or both of them. A bank of exhaust pipes and ducts burst through the floor right in the middle of the room and ran up through the roof. In short, the attic was a major project -- but we needed it done, and we needed it done quickly and relatively cheaply.

Once the house was ours, we called in Karen DiNardo, a general contractor in Oakland who'd recently finished a beautiful bathroom remodel at our old house. After consulting with a structural engineer and an architect (both of whom we paid by the hour rather than pulling them in to oversee the whole project), we agreed on a plan: Instead of installing drywall, which would be too heavy for the floor to support, we opted for 8-by-4-foot sheets of plywood grooved to look like old-fashioned beaded board. With the engineer's OK, Karen and her crew raised many of the ceiling ties and removed or relocated some of the roof supports. Window trim, baseboards, and other finish carpentry were simple lengths of MDF. Everything would be sprayed out in glossy white.

The architect took on the space-planning aspect of the project, helping us figure out what areas to close off and how to carve out distinct zones while still leaving the space looking and feeling open, and devised a simple railing to prevent falls around the stairwell. He also came up with the ingenious idea of recessing bookshelves into the walls wherever possible. I can't tell you how invaluable all that shelving has been when it comes to keeping our daughter's things under some semblance of control.

We were at a loss about how to install a budget-friendly floor in the raised areas. I can't stand wall-to-wall carpet (plus, I knew it'd quickly get filthy, given all of Laurel's messy art projects) and we wanted to match the wood floors that were original to the space, but couldn't afford to. Karen suggested simply screwing down maple plywood. We agreed, then had the floors in the entire space -- both fir and maple -- stained a deep, dark chocolate hue to tie them together, to camouflage the doug fir's beat-up condition, and to ground the otherwise all-white space.

Once the room was ready for Laurel to move into, we realized that the furniture she'd had in her previous, 10-by-10-foot bedroom barely filled one corner of her new space. We were essentially out of money after forking over a down payment and settling up the tab for the attic conversion. But luckily, I managed to find most of the extra furniture and other items we needed for next to nothing on craigslist and from IKEA, eBay, and the Alameda Antiques Faire.

Here's a look at the finished space:

The India Rose laundry bag is from RianRae, and the Hemnes dresser is from IKEA; I dressed it up a bit with purple glass pulls from Auntie Gin's eBay store.

The art table (and Saarinen knockoff) is IKEA's Docksta; the Ant-like Morrow Chairs are from Pottery Barn.

The daybed is perfect for reading and daydreaming, as well as hosting friends for sleepovers. Eventually, we'd like to replace the vent with a petite window. The ticking-stripe rug and toile quilt were from Pottery Barn via eBay, and the dotted pillows are from Tonic Living.

The room is a lot more girly than I'd be comfortable with in any other part of the house -- but hey, it is for a little girl. And it's actually more toned-down than Laurel probably would have liked. The paper hearts all over the place -- as well as the American Girl posters and the, umm, Emma Watson (aka Hermione Granger) shrine -- are her contributions to the design. She's a pretty prolific young artist, too, and we need to get some of the pieces she's proudest of mounted and hung. She's been begging for a chalkboard wall, too, but I'm pretty sure chalkboard paint won't work on the grooved paneling, so I've been on the hunt for a big, vintage school chalkboard so that she can doodle on the walls to her heart's content.

Left: The IKEA Lillberg Loveseat was a craigslist find, painted white; the Optics Floor Mat is from Koko. Right: Laurel has never once done her homework at this desk ... but at least it's neat and organized now! The magazine boxes are filled with her collection of Martha Stewart Living -- yes, god help me, my child is a Martha fanatic. (I swear she did not get that from me.) The rolling metal Helmer Cart behind the desk is from IKEA, and holds her art supplies.

Left: Watch out, Rami Kashou -- this girl does draping like nobody's business. Right: A closeup of the stained maple plywood used for the floor in the elevated area; the circular rugs are actually bathmats from IKEA.

Left: Simple, unfinished pine bookshelves recessed into the wall in the reading area and in other areas of the room and then trimmed out and painted to match the rest of the space were a stroke of genius on our architect's part; the vintage chair was an eBay find; the white flokati rug is from PB Teen, purchased on eBay. Right: The bedding is a mix of linens from Anthropologie, West Elm, and PB Teen (all purchased on eBay); the "headboard" is actually a folding screen; the vintage glass lamp and floral lampshade are both from eBay; and I found the marble-topped bedside table at the Alameda Antiques Fair.

Left: More built-in bookshelves hold toy-corralling boxes and bins. Right: The vintage harlequin was a thrift-store find.

Left: The swing chair was originally from Urban Outfitters, purchased practically new from a craigslist seller. Right: The capiz shell chandelier is from West Elm.

Top left: I bought a selection of colorful pom-poms in various sizes for a few bucks each at Cargo in Portland on my last trip there. Laurel found the landscape portrait at the Oakland Museum White Elephant Sale; she was extremely proud of herself for snagging "original art" for just $5 -- and I'm extremely proud that she already gets that the "original" part of that equation is important (never mind the relative quality of this particular piece). Right: I used the Rasterbator to create the wall-sized image over her keyboard. Bottom left: The throw pillow was made by sewing together two $2 placemats from the Crate & Barrel Outlet and stuffing it with polyfill.

Here's the kicker, though: This is the view our daughter wakes up to every morning. Lucky girl.

Next up on House in Progress: Our dramatic dining room makeover!