April 2017 Loft floor, railing, baseboards, and bookcase

The upstairs mattress sits directly on the loft floor and nearly covers the whole thing, so I didn't want to spend much money on the finish nor add weight/additional height to the loft floor. At first I tried to paint the floor but the plywood we used was not great quality and it looked terrible. So I spent some time patching the holes, and glued down a faux leather fabric. The finish turned out really well, and I was pleased with how my $35 investment looked (and felt!). It is much nicer to clean compared to painted plywood as well.

We first installed some LED puck lighting near the beds but found the light too bright and the direction was wrong. So we replaced them with gooseneck LED lights from Ebay that work much better.

The railings had to be very sturdy, so although I liked the idea of clear plexiglass or reclaimed wrought iron, in the end we went with heavy duty hardwood dowels. My husband hung on them to test their strength.

I got a lesson on how to install baseboards, which were purchased used (along with much of the window trim), from a classified ad. I primed and painted them Benjamin Moore's "cloud white", like all of the window & door trim in the tiny house.

"You mean I have to mitre these?!?"

My husband planned and then built the secret storage behind the bookcase. The design originated because we had wanted to put a composting toilet in the jog, and while it had a ton of theoretical storage space, we were weirded out by the prospect of storing coats above poop. So the idea was to access the jog storage from the main room. When I saw the beautiful use of bookcases from Handcrafted Movement in their Artisan Retreat, I was inspired.

Still too cold & wet to paint outside, so this is sitting by our fireplace indoors.