My husband Neal took this photo of me in July of 2004 seconds before I tore down my very first wall. (There have been many more since, believe me. Actually, my wall count is 9.)

Like the title says, this is me, having fun.

Yesterday’s post was about the IEP notebook I made while my son Ted, who has Aspergers, was in school. You could say that was fun too. Several readers commented about the thoroughness of it.

Yeah.

I can be that way.

The post also mentioned displaying our children’s artwork, and when I read this comment from my friend Ariane,

We have a hallway with Emma’s art work on one side and Nic’s on the other. Yeah, it’s what we do.

She got me thinking about how, as parents, surrounding ourselves in the beauty that is our kids is indeed, what we do.

So, today, I thought, why not tell the story of how our children’s art gallery came to be. Remember that photo of me about to knock down my first wall? Well that’s where this remodeling story begins…

This is two photos merged to show you Meg’s closet area right after I knocked down the first wall but before any further demolition. Where I stood to take these photos is where the wall had been. The door in the center is to her bathroom and the double doors on the right are to her bedroom. The curtained closet was small, the shelves were pointless and there was all this wasted space in the middle.

Not only was this closet a poor use of space, but with this configuration you had to walk through Meg’s bedroom to get to a downstairs bathroom. Not good. Ted’s bathroom is downstairs too, but asking anyone to use it, is well, not nice. Would you want to use an adolescent boy’s bathroom? Definitely not good.

After I got the thrill of knocking down a wall out of my system I went about the real work. First I framed in Meg’s old bedroom door…

And hung drywall over it…

Next, I relocated Ted’s bedroom door which had been along the living room’s main wall. Not only did this location decrease his privacy but you could see into his messy room from the house’s most public space. His new room entrance was now opposite what would become Meg’s bedroom door. The living room looked much better with the door gone…

Here is a photo of Ted’s new door. We did this in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan. Five days without electricity, but the remodeling went on…

With the doors in place I had to run the electrical wire that was in the ceiling down and into the wall next to Meg’s new door to install a light switch. So, I went fishing…

That was tedious work! And speaking of tedious, notice the damage to the ceiling? Well, that meant new drywall.

After I made it through that hurdle, I installed crown molding. Won’t tell you how many feet I ruined while figuring out how to make miter cuts in crown molding. (I will though save you the waste and share what I learned… place the crown into the miter box like you are looking down on it from above.) After the crown, down went baseboards and trim, sand the wood floor where the wall had been, paint and then my favorite step, HANGING PICTURES.

It took me six months of nights and weekends and the results were well worth the effort…

Looking at Ted’s new door from Meg’s room…

The double doors Meg used to have were replaced with an identical door to Ted’s. I’ll admit it… I like balance and was glad to restore it to this space. This is looking at Meg’s room from Ted’s room…

The Kid’s Hallway from the library. The wall with the Peppers is where Meg’s bedroom door used to be…

Finally, the pièce de résistance, the art work…