Ryan McFarland

One of the big reasons that i have not been posting much lately is because much of my time has been put into the finishing touches of the apartment we’ve converted some of the space in the house to.

The apartment kitchen received a hand-me-down stove from when we bought a new one.  The cabinets and cupboards are from the workshop.  The refrigerator (not pictured) is one that Cena had and we dedicated mine to our kitchen instead of having a spare fridge for when we have 30 guests that all bring six packs.   The counter top, sink and fixture, light, and cabinet hardware is all new.  Tim helped with wiring the receptacles and the stove (I did the crawlspace work).  I did all of the plumbing.

The dining area features a brand new wall and a separation from our stairwell (the funky part on the right of the picture).  It has hemlock crown molding and bentwood furniture that i bought at the Fred Meyer grand reopening in Juneau.  The storage here is pretty substantial to make up for the lack of cupboard space…

I finally trimmed out the pine door that enters our part of the house (making the apartment more B&B-like or in-law-apartmenty) with lots more pine.  Cena said “if i ever feel an earthquake i’m getting under this doorway.”  That would be a good idea.  Besides the pine you see - one side of the wall had 5/8 plywood behind the sheetrock and the other had one inch thick tongue and groove behind the sheetrock.  That was quite a surprise when i tried cutting to install the door.

One of the benefits of having our shower door explode was that we used the downstairs shower and found it quite claustrophobic.   So we installed a crescent shower rod and put in a nice cloth curtain and liner.  It definitely makes the bathroom feel pretty luxurious.  You can see my towel rack from a wine rack on the right side.

Finally, the bedroom which was formerly a dark blue, had built-in cedar shelves, and was quite kids-roomish in decor…

Tim and Beth both helped with this room quite a bit - The baseboard trim is 1×12 pine with a quarter round trim piece added.  The crown molding was ordered from Lowes because we needed some really wide stuff to cover right over the crown trim that was already up.  Beth picked the color (She gets to see it every day) and painted it.  The furniture is all oak and was from my house but has been the spare bedroom set since Cena and i moved in together.

The white closet area had built in cedar shelves but the sheetrock behind was terrible.  Tim and i put an overlay of new 5/8 inch drywall and tonight i finished installing the base trim and Cena painted it.

The area behind the door has a small Closet Maid setup for hanging clothes.  You can see some of the detail in the crown molding in this picture because of the profile on that corner.

We’re both tired from long hours of working on the place.  Time for one last soak in the hot tub before we share it with the “tenant” and a glass of champagne to celebrate another milestone in our home improvement journey.