No Longer a Halfway House...whatever that means

While visiting family in Alabama, a cousin of mine that shall remain nameless, commented that he would come visit, but he was waiting until our home no longer looked like a halfway house! I'm assuming he felt that way from the pictures seen here. Well no longer!! Our house actually resembles a home at the moment, and for that, I am very thankful! Here are a few pictures of the updates:

gray walls that have a touch of blue in them in certain light; hopefully I'll find a new bedspread and another bedside table soon

we still need crown molding, which we plan to recycle from the living room, closet doors and eventually we'll paint the bedroom door

Just after Thanksgiving, we moved back into the master bedroom! Hooray!! No more sleeping against a wall! And I will say, always use a bed frame. You may not think putting the box springs and mattress on the frame makes much of a difference, but let me tell you it does. It's also nice to be able to sit on the side of the bed and not have your feet touch the ground (or maybe touch a little if you're tall like me!) as opposed to being able to knee yourself in the face when getting up without a frame.

sort of blown out (sorry...weird lighting) but here we have a complete living room! 

We also put our living room back together...finally! The floors are 95% done in the house (we need to touch up the hallway and transitions...and if you were to count that we haven't done the carpeted areas I'm sure the percentage would drop...but let's not think about that!) so we can now live in the living room! We bought a rug at Lowe's on clearance and put the original furniture back in. Oh, and we got a nice deal on our first flat screen on Black Friday! What can I say, we're extremely late adopters when it comes to technology :) All those extra digital channels came in handy for the Iron Bowl when our local CBS station decided to show infomercials instead of the game...don't get me started on that blessed event--the fight with CBS, not the actual game--though we shouldn't talk about that either.

Anywho, all that to say, the bedrooms are done minus some minor changes and decorating so we can now focus on the next headache, er joyous improvement: the kitchen.

It's been too long...!

Eek! Where did the last two-ish months go?! After my last post in July, I left for Alabama for a "business" trip, came home for a bit, headed to Maine for vacation, then a quick trip to the Adirondacks...and I have no idea where September went. I promise to do better. I hope :)

Now for updates!!

Two of the three bedrooms are 98% complete. My dad and step-mother flew up for a visit last month (that was my September excuse!) so we completely finished the guest room sans crown molding. I also have a really neat idea for a headboard that I hope to tackle soon. The office/third bedroom is done minus the crown molding and a tiny bit of electrical. I'll post pics of that soon...when I can get back there. More on that soon.

We started on the master bedroom floors about a week and a half out from the parental visit. We used a much thicker brush for the stain thinking we would need fewer coats in the end. Bad idea. The first coat wasn't dry by the end of the week, nor by the time our visitors arrived, nor by the time they left! Rather than looking like the other rooms where the wood grain shined through, this looked like we had painted our floors. So we started sanding it back up to start over.

In the middle of the bedroom fiasco, we got the opportunity to move out for a week to work on the living room and hallway floors. Here's a before pic:

I had to take this with my phone so it's a bit dark. This room had the best floors by far out of the entire house. (Well...except the whole "carpet in the kitchen" thing.) No deep stains, and Andrew sanded them really well. We moved out on a Sunday, I stained the hallway on Monday and the living room on Tuesday. In the picture you can see where I stained the perimeter with a brush. We used a mop to do the rest of the room. I highly recommend getting the brush/mop apparatus! It made staining so much easier.

You can get lamb's wool pads for these, but the guy at Lowe's told us the cheaper version would do just as well. You just need to be careful to smooth out where you start and stop with the mop--it can leave a mark or small bubbles. Overall though, it was a fabulous purchase. Below is a pic of the first coat:

We left that island area because we need to sand the closet area a little more. Once we poly the rest of the floor we'll go back to that area and blend it with the rest. 

All of those pictures were from last week, so we're now on week two of being out of the house. Last Sunday we touched up the entire area and are now waiting for it to dry before doing the poly. More pics of work to come soon, plus a new feature for the deck!

Pictures!

I realize it's been over a week since I last posted, and I feel terrible for it. Comcast isn't able to get to our house to hook up Internet until after the 4th of July, so until then I have to find time when I'm near wi-fi and not working to update. I wanted to post a few "before" shots of thehouse while I have a minute.

This is the outside of the house (obviously.)

This is what the floors looked like before we sanded them. They had dark stains in several places, so we sanded them and plan to stain them darker. This way we didn't have to sand terribly far down, which takes more time and effort. We were able to rent a belt sander from a local hardware store for $55 for 24 hours. We only used three pieces of sandpaper (one that was on it and partially used) so the total came to $65.

"Before" den

"Before" kitchen wall. Hand painted wall...not sure what was going on here, but I'm ready for it to be gone!

Sanded floors.

I'll post a few more pics later with an update of our work and planning over the last week.