The Black Hole

Our upstairs loft, is in many ways an awkward space. It's narrow layout makes it a perfect room for a private bowling lane, although the noise that would resonate downstairs might be a problem.

When Charlie came along, we moved the guest room upstairs as was covered in my last post about the stairs. One half of the loft is dedicated to the guest room with a bed with side table and a dresser. The other half serves as a second living room which allows me to escape to our second TV when Katie is watching something like Desperate Housewives. At the far end of the room is where our "office nook" is. The space is exceedingly inefficient and uncomfortable. So I decided to make this my next project.

The first that would need to go would have to be the dingy rainbow shag carpet that lined the entire loft space. Due to the age of the carpet and the extreme heat that engulfs the loft in the summertime, the rubber padding beneath had all but disintegrated into a filthy black powder which made this a messy demo. Once the carpet was pulled up and I cleared my sinus cavity of the blackest boogers you have ever seen, I needed to rip up the next layer of flooring, the linoleum. This time, the summertime heat was on my side - the tacky glue that once held the vinyl in place was very pliable and peeled off like two week old scab.

What we were left with was the attic subfloor, which appeared to be painted pine planks that were in fairly decent shape. Another coat of brown paint would make it look like new. With the carpet and linoleum now out of the way - I had a blank canvass to work with.

Bust out the sledge...

The existing space for office nook - the closet on the left is about to go bye bye. You can see remnants of the carpet and the underlying subfloor just in front of the desk.

No more closet! The space is already feeling more roomy. The vent pipe runs from the basement to the roof and will be cleverly hidden later.

Paint has been matched - the room is nice an airy. Vent pipe has been covered by a unique shelf system. But I feel compelled to smash some more stuff...

Inspired by this new found sense of space, I decide to make an alcove for our TV armoire. Katie is not happy. Notice the improved trim work on the window and shelf system.

With the pesky wire frame that served as the stucco out of the way I could begin framing for the sheet rock...but I feel compelled to smash some more...

Why not make the hole bigger? Why limit yourself to a 28" TV when you could have a 47" HD widescreen someday? A little presumtive construction is what I like to call it.

I earned my hero status for the day and rescued Aquaman from the attic insulation and as it turns out he is very proud of his package.

Drywall coming together and trim work going in. The Huggies box served as a great debris box. It's too bad their diapers can't hold that well.

Window trim getting a coat of paint.

A little mudding - the recovered chair was perfect to roll around on while I wrapped up the mud job.

Trim work just about finished, painting done, and now to paint the newly laid floor planks.

New coat of paint on the floor - total 180 from the rainbow carpet.

Ready to move furniture back in and start work on the desktop.

Desk being constructed and blinds put in.

Stairway to Heaven?

Typically, the nesting instinct tags the expectant mother before it taps on the shoulder of the anxious father. And while Katie's nesting culminated in a feverish two-minute drill weeks before little Charlie arrived, mine was a few months ahead of schedule - and thankfully so.

My nesting story is coincidentally our first renovation project. I traded the sponges and windex for a hammer and nails. In order to get the nursery ready, we had to transfer the guest room to our upstairs loft. We had originally planned to put the guest room upstairs when we moved in, but much to our disappointment found that the box spring would not make it up the tight staircase to the loft.

I knew we would have to face this obstacle, and aside from sawing the box spring in half - there was only one other option: Tear out a few steps to get enough clearance for the box spring. In my humble estimation, I figured subtracting three steps would do the trick. So without further ado, I grabbed the baby sledge and started tearing out some steps...



I got to three and quickly realized it was going to take more...a lot more.


That's pretty much the same "hey honey!" face I made when Katie came to see why there was still demo work being done in the stairwell. You can imagine what this is doing to her psyche - baby is a few months away, the nursery isn't finished and I've decided to rip out all the steps in our staircase...she's going to need some convincing.

Aside from the box spring issue, the steps were in dire need of replacement. Anyone north of 300 lbs stood a good chance of crashing right through those rickety steps. And while we don't know a lot of people that size, you never know when you're going to be asked to host a hot dog eating contest in your loft.

Well, the box spring eventually made it upstairs and to this day, guests claim it is the most comfortable bed they've ever laid on. But back to the stairs...

The existing angle of approach on the stringers was less than desirable but I knew trying to reset the angle and cut new stringers was way out of my league. So I settled on keeping the original stringers in place and replacing all the treads and risers.

All in all, I worked on the stairs off and on for about a month and couldn't have done it without Jared letting me borrow his finishing nailer and pancake air compressor...I'll just shut up now and show you the progress photos...

Added some skirt boards for aesthitic appeal...(those are braces holding them in place as the liquid nails dries)


Because of the skirt board, my the surface area on my stringer is diminishing, so I screwed on some scabs...

Halfway there...

Now we don't have to use a rope to get up there!

Ah...the quality craftsmenship of an older home...you would expect the threshold to have consistent depth on either side...but noooooo....This tread is actually straight...it's the threshold that's off. I fix this later by adding a crooked tread to match the crooked threshold.

One from the top (pretty steep huh?) Prepping for paint job. (You can catch a glimpse of the rainbow shag carpet that adorned Will Hoge's "jungle room".)

Looking better already...

A little sanding and a couple coats of stain...

The City Paper makes a great paint mask - and great Sodoku!

About Sylvan Park

Sylvan Park is wedged between Charlotte Avenue and West End and sits just outside the western portion of the 440 loop that skirts the south side of Nashville. It's charming older homes and proximity to downtown and Vanderbilt have made it a perennial hot spot since the mid-90s. Streets named after states like Utah and Wyoming are bisected by numbered avenues forming the traditional gridlike pattern found in older neighborhoods. Before Sylvan Park became Sylvan Park, it was part of New Town (quite the original name) which eventually became West Nashville. Back then the east west roads were numbered avenues and the north south ones were numbered streets.

Sylvan Park was also a much larger neighborhood than it is today. In the 50s when the interstate system gouged its way through Nashville, it severed many of the inner ring neighborhoods including Sylvan Park. Historic homes that once sat along Alabama and Delaware Avenues, are now replaced by eight lanes of traffic and mostly blighted commercial store fronts.

But the loss of the homes along those two streets pales in comparison to socio-economic chasom that was created when I-40 came through and tore Sylvan Park in two. Today, gentrified Sylvan Park sits to the south of I-40 and has been steadily shaking its recent roots of a mostly low-income rental neighborhood. Young married couples (like ourselves) are moving in and renovating and expanding the charming old bungalows and cottages that make up Sylvan Park.

But just across the wall of exhaust and the cacophany of roaring vehicles on I-40 sits a lost piece of Sylvan Park that hasn't enjoyed near the amount nor the speed of revitalization that Sylvan Park has. The Nations - as it is now referred to - has been crippled with high crime and neglected properties for decades. Now I-40 acts as a socio-economic buffer that is rarely crossed by residents of either neighborhood.