My New Tornado Room

Never in a million years did I think I'd be writing a post about creating a tornado room in my house.  Welcome to the Midwest I guess.  Thankfully, I've never had the need to use a tornado room.  But at least now, I have one and feel a bit more comfortable that it's there.  Moreso, my parents feel more comfortable.  I used to joke to my mother that my couch was the most comfortable place to be in a tornado in my house.  I wasn't going to cram myself into a coat closet and be uncomfortable if I was about to be sucked up into the sky.  I'd make sure I had a margarita in one hand and Janie in the other while we sat under a fur blanket on the couch waiting for it to get us.  I mean, I'm kidding.  But I really didn't have anywhere "safe" to go, so the couch seemed like the logical place to me.  

Since I have lived in Indiana over the last 14 years, we have had a few tornados touch down within miles of my house but again, thankfully, not in my neighborhood.  Most are nowhere near my house, in more rural areas of Indiana.  But it's definitely happened and I've driven through the neighborhoods that have been within a 5 minute drive from me to see how destructive they are.  

Queue this past spring/summer when I was redoing my laundry room.  I was going through pictures of the house build and came across the photo of the space underneath the stairs.  I had talked about utilizing that space for probably almost as long as I've lived in the house, it just never was a priority.  Meaning, it never got put on the "to do list."  Seeing the photo this year made it pop into my head again that I should do something with that space.  I chatted with my mom about it and then brought it to my dad's attention.  You know- one of those "how difficult would it be..." conversations we have with each other.  I sent him the photo and was like- Look how much space there is!  So much room for activities!  HAH!  Movie quote.  

He jumped on board and it was put on the list of projects when he and my aunt were here in July/August.  The space was behind the drywall of this tiny coat closet in my kitchen.  The coat closet was full of coats (shocker) & outdoor gear as well as was home to my vacuum, carpet cleaner, sewing machine, outdoor dining chair cushions and other random stuff.  It wasn't a very large space at all, basically being the depth of a coat hanger, give or take a few inches and about 3 feet wide.  

When they got here, we couldn't wait to see how much space there was so we cut a hole in the drywall.  

I mean, come on.  Look at all that unused space! The left wall is the wall of the pantry and the right wall is the wall of the living room.  Once we took the entire back wall of the closet out, this is what we had to work with.  

You can see how far past the closet wall it went by the floor cutting off and going to concrete.  It's about 10 extra feet, roughly 30 square feet that was just hidden and unused.  Crazy.  We picked up a few sheets of drywall and got to work.  And by "we" I absolutely mean "my dad."  He did all of the first part himself.  I stood there with a broom and dustpan cheering him on.  

He taped, mudded, and sanded it all himself.  When they left, the room looked like the last photo.  Then it was my turn to finish it.  I ordered some peel and stick flooring, painted the walls, picked out some lights since there wasn't a light in there previously.  If we were smart, we'd have run electricity in there.  We mentioned it at the beginning and then completely forgot during the drywall process.  Oh well.  Battery operated lights work just fine.  It's for tornadoes.  I'm not going to be in this room for hours on end.  Christ, a flashlight would do.  

First thing I did was paint the walls.  I used the same white I've been using in other rooms- Bowline.  I won't tell you how many times I smashed my head on the angled ceiling while painting.  It became quite comical.  I'm seriously surprised there weren't any dents in the drywall after I was finished painting.  

This is the floor I picked out.   It came in a package of 10 so I needed 3 boxes.  

There are a lot of options for peel and stick flooring and I knew I could do something a little more "fun" in this space that I might not necessarily do anywhere else in the house.  But before I could start laying them down, I had to get rid of that piece of linoleum and the glue underneath it.  

Then I rolled on a concrete sealer to fill in the cracks and divots, prepping the floor for the tile.  

Once it was completely dry, I started laying out the tiles.  

I still need this room to function as a closet and store the things in it that were already there.  So I installed brackets and hung a closet rod for the coats.  I also bought a pair of battery operated lights.  I'm definitely not in love with the lights.  They turn on, so they do what they are meant to do.  There weren't many options for lights so I went with the least ugly.  But they definitely stick out much farther than I thought they would.  I'll probably end up changing these to something else and using them elsewhere in the house.  They actually have wiring so I could use them as normal hardwired lights but they came with the puck light and remote to use as battery operated as well.  

I then installed the baseboards.  I'll show you my very professional way of finding the angle of the two walls to cut the baseboard.  

It was some scrap paper with my grocery list on it.  I army crawled to the back of the room and folded the paper at the angle of the wall.  Who needs real tools?  I'm nothing if not resourceful.  Once I had the folded part, I brought it out to the miter saw and moved the table until I matched the angle of the paper.  VERY CLEVER.  I cut my two pieces and brought them inside to paint.  Then installed.  

I ended up buying one of those cube storage units with some cloth bins so organize and hide some of the smaller things that were being stored in the original closet.  

See what I mean about the lights?  The one on the left side doesn't really matter since it's behind the coats and I won't be walking on that side.  But the one on the right sticks out just far enough to be annoying.  Like I said before, the room is only 3 ft wide.  Take away a foot for the storage unit and there are 2 feet to walk through to get to the back part of the space.  Having to duck around a light isn't what I'm going to want to be doing if I have to run in there with Janie.  The room is definitely more functional than pretty.  I tried to make it pretty but at the end of the day- it's a coat closet and a tornado room.  Janie has a bed in there for comfort.  I threw a blanket in there for me to sit on.  Fingers crossed, there is never a need to use the room for anything other than a closet.  But at least the entire house will have to come up before a tornado would suck Janie and I out into the sky.  There's my optimism for the day.