Long Overdue

Well, it's been almost a year since I've posted something on the house. This isn't because we've stopped working on the house. We have been working plenty on the house! I have just been so busy that I haven't had time to blog. Then I thought about how muvh enjoyment I used to get from blogging on the house that I thought it's time to start this thing up again. Hopefully I still have a reader or two out there.

So our main focus at the current moment is the half bath. We are turning this huge closet off of the kitchen into a 1/2 bath. This summer we had a licensed plummer come out to run the piping. Lucky for us, he was out of a job and we got him for the low low price of $25 per hour. So he ran all new piping so that all we need to do is add the bathroom fixtures. He noticed that our main drain going into the basement floor was loose as well, so he rented a jackhammer and fixed/ secured the pipe under there as well. All of this work for the low low cost of $625. That's including materials! After all of the bad contractors, we finally found an honest one. I feel like we're the ones who made out this time. His work is flawless.

Now all we need to do is finish framing the bathroom and sheet rock, before we get our fixtures of course. For Christmas I received this awesome rug from my mom.
I absolutely love it! I picked up this little rug for the front door.
Sorry these photos were taken with my camera phone. I think I'm going to do black silk curtains in the living room to pull the black out of the rug near the door and tie the whole thing together.
That should add the drama I want in the room. Anyhow- that's it for now. I'm going to try to be more on top of my poor neglected blog.

The big reveal

I know, I know... It's been a really long time since I've posted anything on here. I am happy to announce that we got the floors refinished, the lights installed and new furniture in our living room. It's been a long haul, but here it is.

Firt we had the floors refinished by Arnes floor sanding (the same guy who did oiur upstairs floors. He did an amazing job! There were really deep scratches and plenty of marks. He did the best he could and I'm really impressed with the results.






Then we finished th ekitchen lighting. The repair and sanding is almost complete in the kitchen...



And finally... Here is the amazing new furniture.



I got a new signed print and a mirror above the fireplace. It's finally starting to feel like a home. I LOVE it! To go with the theme of the house I am going for a transitional vibe. I think this firnture fits it well.

It just wouldn't be the same without the fireplace or furniture. I am going for Charcoal drapery and rugs with turquoise accents. Let me know if you have any greta places for nice drapes that are inexpensive. I'm sure I'll be stuck with Pottery Barn. What do you think of the progress???

20 hours later...

Whew! That was a lot of work. I finshed this over a week ago and am just updating my blog now. Life has gotten so busy. This is the almost finushed product. I am going to be just doing some grout on the inside of the fireplace. Glass scratches, so I don't think I'll be putting any inside. I guess I'm happy with it overall. We ended up using the squares and went for a smoke blue-green color. Someone asked me if I used back splash tiles the other day. I tried to give it a more zippered look rather than just throwing up square sheets of tile but I don't know how well it work. I feel like it's really lacking the drama I wanted it to have. Oh well, it's still an improvement. Here are some more photos up close.






Now- for more exciting news. The floors on the main level are being refinished and polyed as I type. My promise to myself was to get these floors done this winter after I completed refinishing all of the woodwork on the first floor- which I did! Even more exciting, I purchased a gorgeous modular sectional to replace my hideous red couches. It's getting delivered this Friday and I'm so psyched. Here is a photo of the couch on the floor. It'll be in more of an L-shaped design at our place:



Last but not least, Quentin installed all of the lighting in the kitchen, and I painted it. What a difference the lighting makes. It really makes the kitchen flow more with the rest of the house. The lighting is soft and halogen vs. ugly flourescent lighting with a HUGE framed oak home made fixture. Here is a photo of the old light:



I'll post photos of the new lights once we are back in the house! Here are some photos of the fireplace before we touched it.


What a difference- right?

Did I say tiling was fun???

Well, I lied. Over the weekend, I began putting smoke gray blue glass tile going vertically on the face of the fireplace.... Ugh. I worked at it for 7 hours pretty much non stop on Friday and about 3 hours yesterday and I'm still not finished. This space is only 12 feet! The tiles come in a square foot sheet. I didn't want to just put the tile up there without cutting the sheet, because I thought it would look boring. I cut the sheets into strips and did a vertical pattern that alternates. It almost gives it a zippered look. Well, non of my spacers fit between the sheets (I got 2 different kinds) so I've pretty much had to eyeball everything, which has made this job more difficult than it needed to be.

Anyway, I am hoping to be finished with this project once and for all next weekend. I'll post some pics then.

Almost finished... but I just found another sanding project.

Well, I am almost done reassembling the baseboards and staining/ polying. The wood work on the first floor looks AMAZING! What a difference. I almost can't remember just how awful the old woodwork used to look. You would think I'm beginning to like sanding woodwork with this new project I've taken on. In fact, here is a glimpse of how dull and boring the old woodwork looked.

That is a floor grate made out of wood up against the baseboard in the dining room (which I've already refinished). BIG Difference. This is the new project I've taken on. I have pulled one of these apart already and plan on sanding it down this weekend. The floors on the first floor are sort of the last to do for us when it comes to woodwork. We plan on tackling those within the next month. Oy! 3 days of homelessness.

Here is a peak at how some of the other woodwork turned out:



Quentin also framed out the stairwell ceiling so that it matches the rest of the woodwork. We sort of assumed that it looked like this at some point before the gorgeous tiled ceilings we installed. Whether it's original or not, it's going to look amazing when it's stained and polyed.



This Friday we finish the tiling on the fireplace!!! Can't wait to have that complete!

We did it!

One final weekend of dust from sanding! We have completed all of the woodwork on the first floor. This has been bugging me since we bought the house 2 years ago. It's the messiest project, not to mention the dust makes us sick, but we're all done! We just have reassemble the baseboards and stain them as well as the doorway.

Here is the stain and first coat of poly on the last of the windows:




As you can see we still have some work left to do. The last dusty project is to refinish the floors. Hopefully they will be done within the next month or two.