Asbestos We Can - no wait, we can do better: From Asbestos to the Best-os

This was our family room, as photographed by the listing agent way before we bought the house. Style: 70s. Maybe even 60s. It even came with a matching painting, which you can just barely see to the left. Jymm was never a fan (painting, or room). Alan didn't mind the style. Maybe it even secretly grew on him. 

Wasting no time, we immediately renovated. 

Pleased with the results, we kept it this way for several months. Sometimes we carefully moved a pile of things from one corner to another, then moved it back. Sometimes we even cleared some space on the floor to add more stuff. But mostly it just looked like this from the day we started moving in until just before the next renovation began.

During Christmas vacation, while Howard and Barbara were visiting, Jymm got the bright idea to rip off some of the paneling in the room to get to the wiring beneath. In the process some of the popcorn, which we suspected contained asbestos, was knocked off of the ceiling. Several weeks later we confirmed that there was asbestos now floating in the atmosphere of our house and decided that sealing the room off would somehow help. At least it made us feel better. Then we hired some professionals to take care of the rest.

We figured while they were in there they might as well make it prettier. So along with encasing the ceiling in dry wall, they tore down the paneling, and the layer of paneling under the paneling, added a window and a door and a cat door (long story).  They also replaced the carpet, since it was contaminated with asbestos. To the left you can see the new door being installed. Quite a gap there, eh? I filled it with some fiberglass when they weren't looking.











It took them a little over a week to do the whole job, except for the carpet which was left for after we did our part. To save costs, we did the cosmetic stuff- painting, molding, lamps, all the while laughing at the cats while they tried to figure out how to use the cat door.

We took a full week just to do 90% of the painting. I expect the contractor would have done it in a day. Meanwhile, the only real drama of the project occurred: the stucco around the newly installed doors and windows started to crack. A lot. At first the contractor said it was normal. Alan did not agree. After about 2 weeks, the contractor came around to Alan's point of view, and had the worst parts patched.






Then today, finally, a week and a half after the carpet guy had come and gone (to be fair, we were pretty sick last weekend) we unsealed the room! Of course, the first thing we did was hook up the video game systems. Yep, we did all of that work in order to have an entire room to play video games in. And it is awesome.

Fun fact: If you stand in a particular place in our red kitchen and gaze toward the yellow wall in the family room you can imagine that you are in McDonald's. All we need now is a ball pit.