The Colonel's (and thus becomes mine too) Newest Home Improvement Project

The Colonel announced that he wanted to redo the upstairs loft. The loft's first iteration contained a DIY daybed, a dresser (full of DVDs) with a television and a DVD player on top of it. The kids used the loft for watching movies or when they had a friend over, it was used as a guest "room".

When Spud graduated college and moved into his own place, The Colonel and I moved the DIY daybed into his old room and moved a huge, comfy chair into the loft (the television and DVDs remained). The loft's second iteration became a reading or movie watching area.

My younger sister has a bedroom on the third floor of her house. The Colonel likes to sleep in it when we visit. In that bedroom is a bunk style bed. The Colonel wanted to create something similar in the loft. He wanted to incorporate the window, so what we ended up with was a window seat/bunk hybrid with book shelves.

Before we could begin the project, we cleared the area and ran the sweeper. Now we had a blank slate.

The Colonel wanted to incorporate some ship lap into the design. He also wanted to use the pretty, colonial-esque, green paint we discovered when we were working on the museum's newest exhibit (we used it on a table).

I do not recall how many trips to The Home Depot or Lowe's we made before the project was complete (it took about a week to complete), but the first trip was made to buy the ship lap, wood for the shelving and paint.

There was a lot of painting in my future, thank God The Colonel had recently purchased a paint sprayer.

I painted the ship lap and once it was dry, The Colonel and I attached it to the wall.

The Colonel ran some wiring behind the ship lap before we reach the top.

Finally, the ship lap was complete. Window framing was next on our list.

The Colonel was constructing the first bookshelf as I was painting the new window frame. I helped him build the second bookshelf.

The custom light switch/power station/reading glasses shelf The Colonel designed for the right bookshelf.

It was now time for me to paint the bookshelves. The weather was perfect, sunny and very little breeze.

The Colonel wired and attached the steampunk lights we ordered to the wall before we moved the DIY daybed back into place in the loft.

The bookshelves were next to go into the loft.

The Colonel completed the wiring on the right shelf...let there be light!

We still had more construction and painting to do before our project was complete. The Colonel framed in the bed and shelves. He cleverly framed around the ceiling fan so that when it was on, it moved air over the bed and outside the bed.

The simple curved frame around the mattress, reminiscent of a captain's bunk...

We added some curtains for privacy.

We are awaiting some new blinds for the window. The wait has not stopped me from putting some of our books on the shelves.

The project is complete. It is exactly as The Colonel envisioned it. This will be the loft's final iteration. I can see lots of reading and maybe some napping in my future.

I LOVE IT!