Cozy Cottage Attic Conversion – Adding Square footage
One of the best ways to add value to a house without spending a fortune is by adding square footage in already existing spaces. Attic space can add so much character with nooks, crannies, and pretty sloped ceilings. It will quickly become your favorite spot in the house. I’m so excited to share with you our attic conversion! We had an unfinished room I had been dying to get my hands on! I actually needed to add this square footage to help offset the costs of remodeling the rest off the ‘Cottage in the Woods’ and still come out ahead, when and if, we sell this pretty little place down the road.
This is the room before, as you can see we had a large chimney pipe we had to contend with. I drew up a simple plan that included two closets with a window seat between. I could perfectly picture the girls all curled up in the window seat reading a book.
One of the closets would hide the pipe and the other of course, would be for clothes. As always, I could get nothing done without my sidekick, my carpenter Terry. He started with building the knee walls and framing out the closet space, as well as building out the existing rafters so we had enough room for insulation. After that we added tongue and groove poplar planks to form the walls and ceilings. I let Terry have a little design star moment himself, he wanted to run the wood vertical on the window seat and I agreed that could look cool.
Deciding on the paint and stain was the hardest part. I first planned to whitewash the entire space, but just never had that perfect “ahhh I’m in love!” moment with any of my sample attempts. The wood grain is so pretty! It always pains me to put that first swipe of paint on wood, to commit, but I always love it in the end! I bargained with myself and settled on staining the ceiling and sloped walls, while painting the regular walls white. But first I made sure to use a conditioner on the wood. I choose Minwax Pre-stain. If you have tried staining and ended up with a blotchy ugly mess, then wood conditioner will quickly become your best friend! I put Vaseline in random locations on the wood before painting it to give it a more aged look.
We used the same wood look ceramic tile on the floors that we had used in both the upstairs bathroom remodels. This was purchased as seconds at the Crossville Tile outlet in Crossville, Tennessee, a great place to save a bit of cash.
The final step was moving in all the furniture. I pulled all this off in one day while Brookland was at school. I planned to move her into this room and wanted to surprise her! We already had the beds… real stunners I found at a thrift store and had sprayed a glossy black. All the bedding and pillows were great finds from Homegoods. My favorite new toy was the accordion lamps I found at our cute local shop The Painted House, the wall baskets are from there as well.
What do you think… doesn’t this look like the perfect room to take a long nap in or read a good book? Brookland actually loved it when she got home and that was the best surprise of all!
