A Champagne Toast for Our First “Finished” Room

Well, it’s finally here. We have successfully finished and moved into our first room. We worked all week on getting the master bedroom finished and now we are able to say “Goodbye!” to the dining room sleeping quarters.

Much of the week was dedicated to painting – Monday was trim and the medium bedroom ceiling, Tuesday was the medium bedroom walls, Thursday was touch ups and more trim, Friday was priming closet doors, Saturday and Sunday were both painting doors and finishing touch ups. We started using the medium bedroom as our paint shop for the doors – it worked quite well.


On Wednesday we installed our new ceiling fan (a necessity since we don’t have central air conditioning!). The old fan in the master bedroom was disgusting – I don’t think it was ever dusted. Below you can see the edge of one of the blades – there was about an eighth inch layer of dirt on each one.



One of the bigger projects to finish before moving in was the radiators. The radiator covers were never able to fit in this room because the previous owner had the line repaired with steel pipe into an “L” shape. In the picture below, my finger shows where the radiator cover is supposed to run.


Chris quickly figured out why they had done this. In the basement, the heating lines are all behind the joist when they come down and a “C” bend was made in the tubing to bring it out into the room. This made it a big headache to fix. Using a complex series of elbows and bends (and adding a bleeder valve), Chris was able to make the radiator work perfectly.



While Chris worked on the plumbing, I took on a very boring task – straightening the radiator fins. So many of the fins were bent before we bought the house but we have also had our fair share of bending them. It wasn’t fun but someone had to do it!


Several months ago, my dad took all the radiator covers home. He removed the multiple layers of paint with a grinder and primed and painted them to look like new. This was no small task – the master bedroom alone had 8 long pieces and 9 small pieces. Since he brought them back, they’ve been sitting in our den waiting to be re-installed. Finally we were able to do just that.


One of the last things we did was installed the closet doors – we are reusing the originals but with a fresh coat of paint and new hardware. Installing the doors took way more time than it should! For some reason, we couldn’t get the right hardware on the right door or figure out the order in which to install them. Finally, with doors installed, Chris took a break looking very relieved!


And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (haha!)…the ”reveal” of the master bedroom. Below are the pictures of the room before, during (the highlights), and after.









And to celebrate our first finished room…popping the housewarming gift from our old neighbors. Cheers!