Come on in and have a seat

If you follow me on Facebook, you'll have seen my updates on my window seat. You'll also have noticed how LONG it's taken me to complete! I think from start to finish, it's taken me 13 days, but it's definitely a project that should have only taken 2-3.

After all this build-up, let me show you the finished product!

Ok, finished-for-now... but I'll get to that later.. And I'm also going to note that we're all good friends, so you already know that I'm a slob. And I don't clean my house for my good friends :-)

PLEASE don't laugh, but this is the best "before" photo I could get (taken over a year ago). I've always been kinda ashamed of the "play room" so I never really took full room photos.

You'll see that the entire left side of the room was taken over by that enormous train table.

































That table has served little-to-no purpose, and I've wanted to get rid of it for AGES. Finally, I photographed it and put it on Craigslist, and it sold within hours!

That sale also funded this project :-)

To start, I played around with the proportions & sizes and shapes I would want the window seat to be, and this was what I settled on.

amazing cell phone photos - sorry - i don't have a lens wide enough to take all of this in from the doorway

I wanted both outside corners to be angled to maximize seating, but not visually "take up" the entire room. The angle on the left is also a 90 degree angle from the wall that the computer is against (the desk leg is the brown piece in the left of the picture). I wanted something to give me a visual on table size, and luckily I just happened to have a pettiskirt that came in the circumference I was thinking. Oh, I love having girls :-). With the angle on the right, it gives room for another seat without this whole area taking up a majority of the room.

Ok, dimensions taken (and edited/altered/rearranged so that I could fit everything onto 1 sheet of 3/4" MDF), basic plans drawn up, and a trip to Lowe's later... I was in BUSINESS!

Let me tell you, though... I should have drawn this up in SketchUp. I've had so many little things go wrong that I SHOULD have thought about, but didn't, really. Usually, I'm good with just quickly drawing up plans and going for it (actually, the slipper chair had no drawings... I kinda winged that one!)... but this time... ugh. There was a reason it took nearly two weeks to finish this!

Here I was, dry fitting the pieces. I had managed to over-think the smaller piece on the right, and ended up trimming 3/4" off of the height. To this day, I can't explain my thought process... I'm just gonna blame it on the AZ heat and leave it at that. I had to make up for that height by creating a plank out of 1 x 3s and cutting to the shape of the piece.  (find about my Lauren Hill mirror here)

This looked SO pretty, I had a hard time not scrapping everything and going with a wooden top for both pieces. Alas, I'm too lazy, so it got painted.. This was where primer revelation came from.

WOO HOO! Time for install! I bought shims, figuring that I would have to work with both pieces to get them level and at a consistent height, but somehow everything fit together beautifully without having to use them. SCORE!

I just used my magnetic stud finder to find the studs, and screwed 'em in using 3" screws.

This one just happened to be where a knot in the wood was, and it was becoming annoying to try to screw through it.



























Then I procrastinated like nobody's bidezz because I was afraid to try my hand at baseboards. I had only bought one 8' trim piece, and I really didn't wanna screw it up. SOMEHOW, I managed to not screw it up too much, and got this whole thing trimmed out with that one piece.

If you'll notice in the photo below, the trim on the window seat doesn't align with the trim in the room. When the previous owners of the house had new carpet installed, they didn't bother to remove and reinstall the trim. So our baseboards appear to be about a half inch smaller than they actually are, because they're below the carpet. I didn't want to remove the trim for the entire room (which would have led to the entire HOUSE) to properly align it (because... as I've already noted... I'm lazy)... so that's just gonna have to stay. I'll figure it out later :-p

Here, I dry-fitted the pieces before installation.

And then installed! There were places where everything fit together AMAZINGLY (above).

Then... not so much! (below)

But I have a secret bff when it comes to things like this.

His name's Alex, and he hides my mistakes REALLY well! :-p

I caulked all of the seams, and... to be honest, I'm still amazed at how well everything turned out.

Remember that big gap? ^^^ You TOTALLY can't tell!

In the pic above, you can see the boards I screwed in for the corner piece to sit on. I cut the piece to size, cut a half-circle to use as a handle and as access to the electrical outlet.

And that finished it off!

Now for my (surprisingly short!) to-do list!

*Make seat cushion
*Build table
*Build additional seats
*Buy accent pillows
*Paint room

**EVENTUALLY** I plan to add doors and/or drawers, but I need to get comfortable with the beveling aspect of my circular saw.

I think when that's done, this'll be the first "finished" room in the house!

Here are a couple of my fabric choices for the cushion (I'm sure I'll make a few cushions eventually, since I get over things so quickly)

So! What do ya think?! Do tough-builds drain you, like they do me? Are you comfortable with trim? Are there toys in nearly every shot of your house, too? :-p