Welcome!

I'm James Maxey, the author of numerous novels of fantasy and science fiction. I use this site to discuss a wide range of topics, with a heavy emphasis on cranky, uninformed rants about politics and religion and other topics that polite people attempt to avoid. For anyone just wanting to read about my books, I maintain a second blog, The Prophet and the Dragon, where I keep the focus solely on my fiction. I also have a webpage where both blogs stream, with more information about all my books, at jamesmaxey.net.

Instagram

Monday, January 07, 2008

Bedroom renovation

Last year when I moved in, I renovated a lot of rooms, but ran out of time and money before I could work on the bedroom. It was a pretty bleak space. The walls were exposed cinderblock painted white, and the carpet was this dingey gray stuff that looked like it was probably 50 years old.

The white walls...
The bad carpet....

Since I have time off from work to work on the final draft of Dragonforge, I thought I'd go ahead and make a final assault on the place. I had originally thought about putting up more drywall, but while I was looking at paints, I kept noticing that there are a lot of paints made to give your walls a fake stone or masonry texture. I already had a real masonry texture! So, I decided to paint the room a brick color, brown with a hint of red (or, red with a hint of brown). The photo below doesn't really capture the color that well, since the flash makes it too light, and without the flash it looks too dark. But, you probably know what color most bricks are. It's that color.


The floor is laminate flooring I got for .69 a square foot at Lowe's. My roommate Duanne helped me put it down (also, he helped with painting). I'm glad I didn't tackle the task alone, because the laminate was a lot harder to install than it seemed in the store. Since it's locking together on the ends and the sides, you really have to lock in an entire strip at once, which might be possible if you're ten feet tall and have four arms. If my room had been any bigger, it probably would have required three people.

In any case, the room looks much better now than it did. Before it had sort of a prison cell vibe. Now it's warm and surprisingly outdoorsy... the brick color makes you feel like you're on the outside of the house. The room also looks larger.

Unless I put in an oven, this is the last major indoor renovation I'm planning for a while. Now I'll be focusing my energies outside.

No comments: