Designing ladders is harder than it seems

In spite of Billy Cundiff nearly ruining our day, we did make some progress on our bedroom loft.  We started the day like most Sundays: standing in the hardware aisle at home depot, just staring. 

Eventually, we did come home and I got all my boards cut for the built in bookshelf.  (And built some legs for it that are either cool or totally stupid, can’t tell yet.)  Today, I will stain all the wood and tomorrow (hopefully) I will assemble it. 

The hubs folding-ladder-on-a-track is starting to come together.  The tracks are up and one side of the ladder is assembled.  We are pretty sure we finally have all the hardware we need for it and we are planning on getting more work done on it tonight.  Yay!

I haven’t blogged about the loft yet, so to start from the beginning: our bedroom is only 11 x 17, and that has to hold 2 wardrobes (because we live in The House With No Closets), two dressers, our bed and Roscoe P’s rather large bed.  Oh, and we lose a lot of space having baseboard radiators on three walls.

So we decided to finish the tiny (only 6′ tall in the center) attic above and take out half the floor to make a reading nook above our bed.  We added a window and re-insulated.

It was a terrible mess during all the work, and one or both of us may or may not have stepped through that handy little hole in the floor/ceiling in the mean time…

Good thing we were removing the ceiling anyway.

At some point, I decided I didn’t have enough work to do and wanted exposed ceiling beams.  Of course, that meant recessing all the insulation and screwing furring strips to the side of each beam to attach the drywall to.

It was worth the extra work (and for now, I’m pretending not to see all the holes in the lower beams).

Because of the very limited floor space, we (he) had to design a ladder that would fold up against the wall, but still be easy to roll out and use.  We’re pretty sure we have it all planned out and hope to post the finished (architecturally, certainly not decoratively) room soon!

Now that we’re nearing the end, we really have to thank our trusty assistant.  Don’t know that we could have done it without him.