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.

A great anniversary present

We have offically owned our home for 1 year as of 01/03/09! I couldn't think of a better way for us to treat ourselves and our accomplishments than to have someone else sand and redo the upstairs floors. We have the ceiling in the guest room completely patched. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to tape and mud the ceiling. The walls just need 1 more coat of mud and some killz before we paint. I can't believe we are almost finished with the guest room. That room was one of the ugliest things I had ever seen in my life and I thought it would be years before we got to that room.

Here are our lovely sheet rocked ceilings. We're getting pretty good at this.


It's a little tricky sheetrocking coved ceilings.

So as I type this they are working on my floors. I am so excited to see them when I get home- I just can't wait. I am posting before photos and will be posting afters on Thursday so make sure to check back.

Guest room Floors:



Beneath all of that dirt is a lovely shade of orange.

Office:


These floors have to be the worst due to the water damamge shown above. The wood almost buckles from water damage.


The Hall:



I'll keep you posted. =)

Almost there!

We had a very productive weekend! We finished the MASSIVE amount of sanding on our hallway and are almost finished with the room. Since it has been so long since the place has been taken care of there were cracks and holes pretty much everywhere. Especially underneath the wallpaper. Every inch of wall was pretty much spackled or completely mudded. Also we had a large patch job next to the bathroom where a door had been covered over for a closet and never really got a proper fix. I trimmed out most of the walls in primer, I think my maintenance guys call that cutting in, I'll just say trimmed out. Tonight we'll probably finish sanding the office and do any final mudding that we might have missed. That means tomorrow we roll out the walls with primer.

After we we are done with that we will begin sanding the stairs. Thank god! They are such an eye sore right now. Soon enough they'll be a back sore. heheh. I also primed the back vestibule which leads in the kitchen. The vestibule has wall paneling up. I painted it the same color as the sun porch. I figured since they're both entrances, and they are such small spaces, that the color wouldn't be too repetative. I also don't want it to look like a fun house with too many different colors. I just need to pick up more high gloss white paint for the trim in the vestibule and paint the ceiling. Once that's complete I'm replacing the carpeting with the same gray carpet tile in the sun porch. I'm not a huge fan of them but it looks nice and it's good enough for now. Especially since we are still doing work which could mess up something nicer.

Things finally seem to be moving along so much faster. We just seem to be knocking out projects left and right lately. I don't know what we would do if we had no motivation. Alot of people forewarned us that we would get sick of working on the house when we bought it. They thought things would never get done. I can imagine most people would lose steam pretty quick and I'm just thankful we haven't.

Oops...

Last week I grabbed a ton of paint swatches from Home Depot and brought them home. I planned on picking out a new color for the sun porch in the entrance. After long deliberation, Deanna and Quentin urged me to pick this color.

It looks like S***. I HATE this color. Now with a little sunlight I don't mind it as much


Back to the drawing board. I wanted more of a honey beige or muted, neutral yellow. On Friday I'll be painting again =(. Hopefully this is the last time.

We have completed our walls and ceiling in the stairwell. Here is the finished look.

The stair sanding madness will ensue this month. I'm not looking forward to this at all. Sanding is the pits. We have to have it finished before July 4th so that we can get someone out to do the poly.

We begin planting this weekend!

Our dogs are doing good. They love to fight.

The sweet taste of success.

I am beginning the poly process tonight on the buffet. The poly process is alot less work than the staining- atleast I assume. We are waiting to start the drawers. If weather permits we'll probably be working on them outside this weekend.

In near future news- I am going to begin sanding the stairs once I've fully completed the buffet. The last thing I want in my life is more sawdust all over my house but this will be the last sanding project we do oursleves for a bit. We are also going to be paying someone to come in and sand the floors in the office and the upstairs hall. I have a feeling it'll cost around $500 give or take. The room isn't very large nor is the hall. Having those floors redone will make a huge impact on the upstairs. I CAN'T WAIT!

Outside we have begun ripping out bushes and I am going to start seeding our non-existent grass this week. I'll post photos soon.

More exciting news- we just had family move near us (John & Kendra) right down the street. They got an awesome fixer upper as well and I'm hoping they blog about it as well. We are super excited to have them as neighbors!!!

Sorry I haven't updated this in so long. I hope you're still reading the blog.