Over the past month, we've been working Saturdays on two projects: the back entry, and refinishing the hardwoods in the hallway and back bedroom. When we emptied out the furniture from the back bedroom last weekend it all landed in our living room. Such a mess. And you know how one project sometimes leads to another? Well, I decided that since all the furniture was out of that bedroom we might as well paint. Yeah, I know. Glutton for punishment, right? So this weekend was a marathon of finishing craziness. Do you ever get to a point in the project and you just want to be done? I'm past there :). The sooner my house is back to normal and I can walk through my living room, the happier I'll be.
As a reminder, here is what the back bedroom looked like before, well almost before, this whole process. I wish I could say the mess was because we were tearing up the carpet, but this room was pretty much a complete mess most of the time anyway. Sadly, this picture is a pretty accurate before. The carpet was DISGUSTING: stained and incredibly smelly once we started pulling it up. The wall color was not only hideous, but poorly applied.
Here's what the room looked like when I got started on Friday. We'd finished scraping and sanding the floor last Saturday. Friday morning I washed all the walls, the ceiling and the fan. They were filthy from all the floor sanding. I took a nice long break to help my mom start picking out new living room furniture (so fun!) and then my exciting friday night consisted of: running to the paint store, taping off the newly sanded floors, filling wall holes, scraping the windows, filling wood holes and priming. Saturday morning our friends were back (they are SO AWESOME!) and we girls started painting. We painted one coat on the ceiling, two coats on the wall and two coats of trim. It took all day.
Here's what the room looked like Sunday morning. Oh hello amazing brownish/grey color. Lovely to meet you in my home. It's a little hard to tell, but the floors are very matte/fresh wood. Chris had to work, so I got going on the floors! I did a wood sealer and a coat of clear satin finish yesterday. I took today off from work so I could just get this done already. Two coats of sealer later and we have beautiful FINISHED hardwoods!
And here's what the room looks like now. So bright and shiny. I was so lucky to get a little sun between rain showers because it really does make the room glow. I can't wait to get the furniture back in .... but that will probably be at least a week. We want to make sure the floors are good and dry before we started bringing stuff back in. I also have a few ideas up my sleeve to freshen up my craft space, so until then, these are the official *afters* of the room.
The hardwoods are by no means perfect. You can actually see the cut marks along the old linoleum. We didn't expect perfection though. The floors are over 80 years old. They have amazing character and help tell the story of this house, and I am so glad we stripped off the nasty carpet to reveal them.
Oh, and that mess I was talking about earlier? This is what my living room looks like right now. Driving. Me. Crazy.
I'm not going to show you the hallway today. The floors are done, but there's a couple little things I need to do still before I show it off. It'll be soon though :).
How was your weekend? What did you do? Any productive house projects? I'd love to hear!
