Living Room: Time for Floors!

The new floors are finally going in! Yippee!! The end is actually in sight!

FYI - when you see all these DIY shows and they tell you how very simple it is to put in laminate flooring - don't believe it!

OK, that might be a little strong. You can believe them. Maybe it is simple if the floor you are installing over is pretty much pristine. Ours was not. We were pulling up 30-something year old carpet. Which meant 30-something year old padding. Padding which had been walked on, spilt on, walked on some more, cleaned numerous times, and who knows what else. In other words, it was a little compressed... matted down... compacted. As a matter of fact- in some spots in no longer resembled padding at all. But more of a hard rubber which was now part of the particle board underneath.

Thank heavens for all the hard work by The Man of the House and the female offspring who spent hours (and hours and hours) scraping that mess up and replacing areas of particle board which were not salvageable!

Finally, the floors were prepped. The new flooring was purchased. Installation is ready to begin!



Look!  Boxes of flooring!

First row is done!

Moving right along!

Living Room: Painting

The living room is finally painted!  Whew... that's a lot of work!  Even the dog got a little paint.  ;0)

Loving the pale gray walls and the darker accent on the wall with the fireplace!

Living Room: Another Weekend of Work

This past weekend was spent finishing up with the priming and beginning the painting process.

Hallway: pre-primer

And post-primer

With the ceiling painted and the trim primed - the walls look so yellow and dingy.  Ewwww!

Priming the entry way took a LOT of work!

Painting the ceiling

First coat of pale grey paint on the living room wall



You can see the new color a little better in this picture contrasted against the old color



Living Room - Days 11 to 20: Prime Time!

The remodel came to a bit of a crawl for about a week - life just got busy and slowed us down. Things are still moving along though - even if it's a little slower than the first week.

We've been taping and compounding the new 1/2 wall at the top of the stairs.

Priming the new drywall around the fireplace

Taping and priming windows (taping is slooooow work!)

And priming various trim around doorways

Stay tuned!  Next up is ceiling paint - which should prove to be highly entertaining...

First To Do's of November

To Do List for November 5 - 9:

1. Work on priming/painting in living room
2. Work on Christmas presents
3. Work on project for Queen B's Busy Work
4. Do something nice for myself (such as bubble bath, mani/pedi, etc)
5. Walk

Living Room: Day 10 - More Drywall

Begin installing dry wall on new half wall at top of stairs:

Living Room: Day 9 - New Wall

The Man of the House framed the new 1/2 wall at the top of the stairs.

Living Room: Day 8

Hard to believe we've only been at this a week! And at the same time, hard to believe it's only been a week!


Saturday (Day 8) was dedicated to two items on the To-Do lists:

• remove the railing at the top of the stairs and get ready for wall construction

 

• remove old antenna and speaker outlets and patch the holes those would leave in the wall.

Yes, that's me - using power tools!



Living Room Makeover: Days 3-7

The week days were taken up with compounding and sanding the new dry wall behind the fireplace.

Thankful Thursday: October 25

Thursday is the day when I pause to take a few minutes and just soak in the blessings which have been poured over me during the past week.

Team Work: I am grateful that the Man of the House have the opportunity to work side by side together to make some changes and updates to our living room

DIY Know How: I am grateful that we (well,OK.... he) is handy enough to DIY the work so we can afford it.

Prune-staches:  I am thankful for the grand baby and the way he manages to make me laugh every single day. 

What are you thankful for?



Living Room Renovation: Day 2 -

Day 2 of the Great Living Room Remodel of 2012 called for the Man of the House to adjust the depth of a couple of electrical boxes to account for the drywall-to-be being thicker than the former panelling.  Once he had that task accomplished it was time to start measuring, cutting, and hanging the drywall.

First section of drywall up!

Drywall on other side of fireplace

Looking good!  Well, except for that big gap of exposed brick and foam insulation over the fireplace

Ta Da!!  Looks  better already, doesn't it?