Who remembers the old furniture-and-pillow hoarding room at the end of the hall we used to call “the storage room”? We ended up taking a bit of that square footage to create our laundry room, which left the space a more rectangular shape and gave us easier access via the new glass door we installed at the end of the hallway.
If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve probably noticed it’s been undergoing a transformation lately.
Some background: this room always felt like a future bonus space. Many of our neighbors had finished above-the-garage rooms from the start, but ours arrived framed with HVAC only—and no insulation—so we kept that system off and used the space for seasonal decorations, spare furniture, and my wife’s massive pillow collection. In short, it was storage by default.
We didn’t show much of the room before because, frankly, there wasn’t much to show. You can catch a dim glimpse of it in an older house tour video and during our laundry renovation posts, but mostly it was the place you’d find the one missing shoe or an ancient half-eaten box of raisins. Organized chaos, if you will.
When we moved in, finishing it was low priority—we figured we wouldn’t need a dedicated play/sleepover/movie space until our (then single) child grew up. Over time our family expanded and so did our needs, so those 360 finished square feet suddenly became very appealing compared to “an almost-finished room to hoard pillows” (don’t worry—Sherry still has the walk-up attic for excess pillows).
We imagined the space serving as a place for art, homework, play, movie nights, and extra sleeping space for visiting friends and family. So late last year we started converting the unfinished storage area into a finished room. The plan was straightforward: update electrical, insulate and drywall, install flooring and trim, then paint.
We had our electrician add outlets and recessed lights (easier and cheaper with no drywall), and a local window company replaced a single window with a triple window to bring in more light. The opening already had the proper header in place, so the swap was relatively simple.
We debated doing the drywall ourselves, but it’s not our favorite task and this room was roughly six times larger than other projects we’d tackled. We hired a local pro and his crew, and they finished drywalling in three days—best decision ever.
That left painting, flooring, and trim. After weighing options, we continued the oak hardwood flooring used throughout the upstairs to maintain visual flow from the hallway into the new room. We’ll add a large area rug to make it cozy.
Luckily the subfloor was regular plywood, not particle board like other parts of our second floor, so we could do a traditional nail-down installation. Laying the floor turned out to be oddly fun, and we’ll share tips on that in a future post.
We painted the walls before installing the floor, using the same Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore that’s in the hallway. After adding baseboards and trimming the windows, the kids were so excited by the transformation they barely noticed the finishing details—they just wanted to run and play.
Now we’re furnishing slowly—bringing in pieces we already own, relocating toys, and adding a hand-me-down craft table so we can see how the space naturally functions before buying a bunch of new items. We do have a plan for the recessed/sloped area by the window and are updating a Craigslist find to fit the room. We’ll share more details as it comes together, but for now imagine kids (and Burger) running laps and laughing as their voices echo off freshly painted walls.
Psst—We finally put together a Shop Our House page to help you find furniture and accessories you see in our home, along with our paint colors.