Our Library Loft Plans

In a few weeks, we're renovating the upstairs loft at our place.  (I CANNOT WAIT!!!! ... well, can't wait for it to be over, I should say ;) ;)   The loft is basically a family room where we keep all of the boys' toys, watch movies, read, etc... (Sidenote on why I love this floorplan so much: The boys don't keep any toys in their bedrooms here because the loft is right outside of their rooms, which has made our lives sooooo much easier.  Cleaning their rooms pretty much consists of making beds and dealing with clothes.  It's sort of like the old homes with the bedrooms off of the "nursery"... love it.)  Anyway, here's what the loft looked like when we bought the house:

We've removed the paneling and will removing the two existing windows and replacing them with one massive window, similar to this one in It's Complicated:

The window is actually 3 separate windows and will be around fifteen feet long.  It will completely open our loft to the back yard and I cannot wait!!!

Here's that area of the loft when we were living in it and using it as our kitchen during the renovations:

It's how it pretty much looks now with our wall-to-wall seagrass and half-painted walls.   The guys got as much done up here before we moved in.  You can really see how "pink" the beige was in the house compared to the cream we're changing it to...

And here's the view from this past Fall:

When you walk into the loft when we're finished, you'll really get to appreciate the view & almost feel as if you're outside.  We've added & enlarged windows wherever possible.  When I come home to our house (the downstairs) after travelling, I'm really struck by how open it is and I feel slightly exposed, but in a good way.  When it snows, you feel like you're almost out there with the snow.  This past week or two, everything turned technicolor green outside with the Spring, and there's a bit of a green glow in our house right now because it's so open.  (I was on facetime with my dad and he asked me what color green was on the walls!!)  I love it!! So, I think adding this massive window upstairs will really get the upstairs feeling the same way.

We're planning to add a window seat under the window:

This is going to be the biggest window seat I've ever seen at fifteen feet long...  I'm wondering how our workroom will get the cushion here.  ("Where there's a will" I guess?? ;) ;)

Here's another view of the family room "before": 

We've removed the built-ins in the pic and we are adding built-in bookshelves to all of the walls.  The new built-ins will consist of vertical drywall columns that support old wood shelves.  In the back of the room, we'll float our sofa in front of the shelves and use the inaccessible space behind the sofa for things we rarely need to access/storage:

We won't have room for floor lamps of end tables with lamps for the sofa, so I'm on the hunt for the perfect sconces to go above the sofa.
I should probably mention here -since I find that people often have questions about this- that we love to read and have a disgusting number of books.  We have ugly books, which I have ways of making look a little better, and we also have some really beautiful books, that yes, we actually read.  ( I say it like that because the last time I posted photos of a bookshelf of mine I got comments saying that the books on our shelves didn't look like they'd ever been read....  I'm amazed you can tell from a photo if a book's been read or not!) My husband (a former English teacher) and I both love to read and he loves collecting first or early editions of books.  My grandfather has also been gifting me (and now my husband & boys too) classics every Thanksgiving, so we've really gotten a fair-sized library going.  AND -I'll admit-  whenever I see a book that's really beautiful & looks interesting for a great price, I buy it, figuring it'll get read sometime.  I CANNOT WAIT to get our books out of our parking spot in our garage and into the house!!!   I've missed my books so much (it's  been since September) and can't wait to dig into them again.  
Here's a quick sketch of how the window wall will look, also surrounded by books:

The window seat will fit in with the shelves and then come out slightly farther than the shelves, which will be 24" deep on this will so the window seat looks more seamless.  Again, the drywall itself will be what shapes the buiilt-ins.  The window seat cushion will sit on a small drywall platform and the shelves above it and the vertical columns will all be made of drywall.  (House dream one day is to coat all of our drywall in a smooth plaster but for now, it's drywall.)  Because this wall of built-ins, is 24" deep, I plan to use it to really stash a lot of our books.  I have an insane collection of cheesy teen horror books from when I was a kid (books I still loooooove & read occasionally... Christopher Pike anyone??  He & L.J. Smith did Vampires best, I think!!!) and so they'll go above the window seat a few rows deep with their pages side forward instead of with their flourescent pink, green, and orange spines outward.  
Anyway, we're starting this next phase in a few weeks and are hoping to finish up this Summer...  Now that the elevations are figured out, it's time for me to start thinking about the fabrics & furnishings.  I'm planning on moving a table of ours up to the window seat so the boys can do crafts & projects, and eventually homework up there.  I'll keep you posted as I put the fabrics together... I'm envisioning a solid on the window seat mixed with a bunch of pillows in my fabrics.
Have a great day & can't wait to hear what you think!!


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