Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

As I shared a few weeks ago, I laid down a new VCT tile floor on top of our old asbestos floor.

Encapsulating it like this is usually the safest option as long as the asbestos tile isn’t breaking or peeling up, which we were told by several professionals that we had come and take a look at the space.

But taking a step back, why did we get launched on this floor improvement project right now, when we have so many other things in the house we want to work on? We had known for a long time that the floors were asbestos, but it never felt pressing to deal with because they were in good condition (ie not breaking, which is what actually releases asbestos into the air). However, a few months ago I discovered some areas in other parts of the basement where the floors had begun to break, primarily around the edges.

This hazard was mostly hidden behind things that our seller left behind like our downstairs fridge, which is why it took us awhile to notice — it was only visible when I really started poking around the darkest corners of the basement. However, it was an immediate flag that we needed to get professionals involved, so I found a few asbestos removal companies that were well-reviewed on Angie’s List and had them out to take a look.

Both companies confirmed that it would be fine to just remove the broken sections rather than the full floor and then put a new floor over it. We obviously wanted to get the broken sections removed as quickly as possible, and both companies gave pretty similar estimates: $300-$400, since it was just very small sections and wouldn’t require a massive disposal effort.

Both companies were well-reviewed and would take all the standard precautions when removing the tile (sealing off the space, wetting down the tiles during removal, cleaning the air after removal), so I ended up going with the company that could do it the soonest. They were out the very next week, and in the span of a morning we want from scary asbestos shards to clean edges:

The black sections are where they removed broken and loose tiles, and leaving in place any surrounding tiles that were totally intact and secure.

It was a big relief to get the issue taken care of, but of course this isn’t a viable long term look for the space. Plus if we left the floor exposed, over time more pieces would start to break because it’s just a very old floor.

That’s when I decided to take on tiling in one corner, to see if it was a viable approach for the full basement. That undertaking convinced me of two things: 1) This was definitely the way to go, since it was relatively inexpensive, durable, and made a huge aesthetic improvement, and 2) I did not feel like doing the rest of the basement myself. I had done the very smallest quadrant, and doing the rest of the basement would require a ton of prep work, carrying incredibly heavy boxes of tile/bags of leveler/buckets of adhesive, and crawling around on my hands and knees for days.

The annoying thing about having a job is that I spend a lot of my time doing it and don’t have a ton of free time. The great thing about having a job is that I earn money that I can then spend on hiring professionals to do home projects that I either don’t have the technical skills to do at all or very well, or that I just plain don’t want to spend my time doing. The floor struck me as a little bit of both, since the corner I did myself is fine but I think a professional would get a much smoother finished result that may be more durable.

We ended up finding someone to do the work pretty soon, and I’ll write a whole separate post about how I picked someone to do it, how much it cost, and how it turned out. In the meantime, I’ll just share the prep work we did, since we needed to clear out the basement to make it possible to lay a new floor and I’m pretty impressed with our handiwork.

We agreed with the floor guy that we would move all the small stuff and he’d take care of the big pieces and work in a few chunks since it wasn’t possible to get everything totally out of the basement at once. Sam and I spent Saturday afternoon working on it, and I’m pretty impressed with how much we were able to cram into the one corner with the finished floor. As you’ll recall, our basement normally has a fair amount of stuff in it:

We got all the smaller pieces of furniture, tools, scrap wood, and exercise equipment into just one corner:

Which leaves the rest of the space fairly open:

We also took off the back of the workbench so that it will be easier for the floor guy to move it, since it’s a big heavy piece:

He’ll only have to move the two work benches (which are totally cleared of tools), washer, dryer, fridge, and some of our exercise equipment. We also cleared out the closets, and took the closet doors off so that when he adds the tile on top of the existing floor he doesn’t have to deal with the closet doors getting stuck on the new higher floor. I’ll cut them down and rehang them once the floor is in.

With all that work done, here’s hoping we have a brand new floor soon!

Happy Monday! Today I’m talking about some changes to the master bedroom that we’re planning on tackling in the next few months.

This was one of the first rooms we worked on when we moved in 3.5 years ago, because I knew it would help us feel so much more settled to have a finished bedroom. We painted it a dark blue/gray, and later I built some furniture for the space including a mid-century dresser, a colorful leaning mirror, and a floating vanity.

I’ve been wanting to make some updates for awhile, but I always thought our longer term plan was to move the master upstairs so it didn’t make sense to invest any time and money in changing this space.

However, I’ve finally accepted that we really won’t want to move upstairs unless we build a bathroom up there, and that’s just not in the cards right now — it would require putting in a dormer and running plumbing to the second floor, and that’s just a really big undertaking and expense that we’re not ready to prioritize. Also, I’m no longer convinced that I actually want us to be upstairs, since if we had kids we’d want the nursery to be on the same floor as us and walking up and down our narrow stairs with a newborn sounds unappealing when we have two perfectly good bedrooms on the first floor.

SO, that means I’m going to spend some time this spring updating the master. It doesn’t need a ton of work, but here’s what I’m thinking:

1) New bedding: When we got married right before we bought the house, my mom got started on a wedding quilt for us. She is a prolific and talented quilter, but she also lives on a sailboat for a lot of the year (yeah, she’s pretty cool) so she doesn’t get a ton of time for quilting. However, she just finished the quilt this winter.

It’s a bright patchwork quilt based on our wedding colors (turquoise and coral), and it uses a lot of fabric scraps that I gave her and that are meaningful to me. Here’s a peek at it:

We really love it, but it’s very bright and colorful so we want to keep the rest of the room pretty simple so it doesn’t feel too busy.

2) Paint: I have loved our dark walls, but as we’ve gotten to know our home I’ve realized that I really love our lighter rooms. We get decent sunlight, and the light walls just make even our smaller spaces feel bright and open. Also, I think lighter walls will work best with the quilt.

I am thinking we should go with either white (which is what we have in our kitchen, sunroom, guest room, and Sam’s office), or maybe a light gray or blue (the hallway and living room are light gray, and I love how it contrasts with the white trim).

Here are a few light bedrooms that have been inspiring me:

Avenue Design Studio // @lindyegalloway // My Domaine // Coco Lapine Design

3) Rearrange and build more closet space: I use the one small closet in our bedroom (which I recently updated to make more efficient), and then Sam uses the closet in his office which is the next room over. However, if that becomes a nursery someday then this arrangement won’t continue working. At the same time, we have this nook that our bed is currently in that I think would actually be perfect for a wall-to-wall built-in wardrobe where we could hang clothes and also have drawers to replace our stand-alone dresser.

It will definitely make the room feel smaller, but I think by limiting the rest of the furniture (ie hiding things like the dresser and jewelry vanity in the wardrobe) it will feel cozy but not cluttered.

Here’s sort of what I have in mind:

Jenna Sue Design Co

To figure out if this might work and where the bed should go, I used my favorite free planning program — floor planner — to mock up some options. The first option I considered was turning the bed 90 degrees to be under the back window:

This could work, but the wardrobe would open up right next to one side of the bed, and the other side is pretty close to the wall. It just felt tight on both sides. Also, the window behind the bed would be really off center, way too much to hide with clever curtain tricks.

The other option I tried was turning the bed to run in the opposite direction than it currently does, so that the wardrobe is at the foot of the bed.

The downside here is that the bed would overlap a bit with our radiator, but the curvature of the headboard actually means that the bed sticks out from the wall regardless (so it wouldn’t be any worse due to the radiator) and I could build a shelf over the radiator to use as a nightstand on one side.

I like that one side of the bed has a lot of space next to it, which would work well if we needed to have a bassinet or something in our room (as you can tell, we’re redesigning this room to work for the next phase of our lives, which we do hope will include kids). The person on the other side is right along the wall, but no more so than in the current layout with the bed in the opposite direction (right now I’m the one along the wall, and it’s fine).

It’s a small room so we don’t have a ton of options, but ultimately I think adding more closet storage is the right move for us and the second layout is the way to go. However, I’d love your feedback. Or, is there another approach we should consider?