Porchlandia: Before - Upstairs

Today is Sunday. It's now been a week since we closed on Porchlandia. I spent Wednesday through yesterday there doing demo and as today is my only day off until next Wednesday, I treated myself to brunch and am planning to spend all of today on the couch with my kitties watching the Olympics. Demo is grueling under the best circumstances, but the first four days were plagued by 90 degree temps plus humidity. By 9am each day my clothes were soaked through with sweat. I don't think I've ever sweated this much in my life. I'm trying my best to stay hydrated though. Anywho, you're probably wondering what the house looks like, right?

Now that you've seen the exterior of Porchlandia, let's head inside and check out the upstairs. When you walk in the front door this is what you see. Or rather, what you would have seen if you'd been in the house before we started demo. Orange shag carpet, yum.

The orange shag carpet covered the stairs as well as the room at the top of the stairs (which could be a playroom or an office or a TV room) and also the walkway to the left, which looks out over the living room.

I have to wonder why orange. Under clean circumstances orange doesn't look good, but years or wear and tear and dirt just make it look gross. I don't think this ever would have looked attractive. 

I'll share the living room in another post, but for now you can catch a slight glimpse of the fireplace down below. We are going to leave the beams the color they are because they're naturally beautiful, but this railing is going to go. For starters it's rough looking but also it's not up to code - it's too short.

The upstairs is made up of the extra space (straight ahead) and the master bedroom and bathroom. Currently, the master bathroom is open on both ends but we plan to close that off so it can only be accessed through the master bedroom. The master bath we'll get to in a second, but first, let's step into the master bedroom.

So here's one of those sliders leading to nowhere that I mentioned before. Not up to code. But they do let in a lot of light. Being there the last couple of days, I've fallen in love (with the house, duh) with the quietness of it. The street I live on in the city is actually pretty quiet, but at Porchlandia you only hear the occasional passing car down on the street, the birds and the whisper of the leaves when a breeze comes through. It feels like a treehouse in a hidden forest.

If you follow me on Instagram then you may recognize this wallpaper. I posted it back in March when we looked at the house for the first time, and then again recently when I framed a piece of it as well as a chunk of the downstairs bathroom's wallpaper. While having it around the entire bedroom was a bit much, having a small square on my wall is great. And it's something to remember this house by.

The master isn't that big. In fact, there's a bedroom downstairs that's nearly double the size. But it gets great light, and my father blew out this closet to make it a decent size. Plus, the master bath is going to be bananas.

This is the current entrance to the master bath. It's a small entrance. But I'm hoping to knock down these two closets and open it up enough to have a barn door there. As you can see, you can walk through the bathroom as it stands right now. Imagine that far door being closed off and turned into a wall.

When you walked in there was a double vanity, a toilet, and a closet on the left. On the right was a shower/tub, a pointlessly large area for hanging towels and then a door access to the storage space behind the bathroom, in essence the attic. The wallpaper was similar to that in the master bedroom, but with a metallic sheen. Also, the carpet continued into the bathroom (why?). 

It's amazing to me that with carpet in there I didn't find mold beneath it. Think of the years of stepping out of the shower and dripping water on the floor, or the toilet overflowing and soaking into the carpet. Sorry, was that too gross to imagine?

This may also gross you out, but you cannot imagine how much mouse poop was throughout the house. Tearing up the carpets my sister and I came face to face with so much of it. Don't worry, we wore face masks and gloves, but still, it just grosses you out to be that close to it.

The dual vanity is obviously a great selling feature so there will be one in the bathroom remodel, just not this gross one. I think the carpet was technically considered green? It's hard to tell here.

I know wallpaper is kind of back "in" in some respects, and I think it could have been done in a really classy way, on maybe a single wall. I feel like Erin Gates (of Elements of Style) could find a way to use it and make it look amazing. 

To the other side of the bathroom. This fiberglass shower/tub was a pain in the butt to remove, let me tell you. I don't ever want to have to remove one again. (Cough.) I will have to remove the downstairs one tomorrow. (Majorly dramatic eye roll and face palm.) But I said I wanted to do the demo so, yay me.

Next to the tub was this odd extra space that I guess was used to hang towels? What a waste of good space. I spent a good portion of yesterday tearing out this drywall so that we can expand it and turn it into a standing shower (the stuff of my dreams). I'm accumulating quite the dream list for my future home, believe me. We were at FW Webb the other evening and I walked through the showroom thinking, I want one of those, and one of those, and maybe one of those.

So on the other end of the upstairs is this extra space. It can honestly be anything. It's a big space and personally I think it's make it a TV/play area and have the living room be a sitting area without a TV. The fireplace is enough of a focus. 

This room is where the other pointless slider was located. I mean, what on earth were they thinking? Unfortunately, taking out the slider and replacing it with proper windows does mean some of the great lighting is lost, but not by much.

So that's it. That's all of the upstairs "before". Are you totally grossed out? I promise it'll get better. Just tearing out the carpet did wonders. I'll share those photos with you next week. In the meantime, we should probably head downstairs and check out the first floor "before".

My sister tore out all of the carpet on the stairs by herself, so a round of golf claps to her for being awesome. Make sure to check back later for the downstairs pictures so you can fall in love with the fireplace. Trust me, you will.

~Stephanie