The office

It's really hard to believe this is what this room use to look like just a few years ago.  Can you say hoarder? 

Basically what we did in this room was rip off the wall paper, patch the plaster, replace the ceiling, replace both the overhead and sconce lights, paint, rip up the carpet, sand and stain the floors, paint the wainscoting, new windows to of course.... and there you have it :)

UPDATED: Master Bathroom

I hired someone to do the renovation for the master bathroom.  I know I know... I've tried to do everything myself, but the reason I've tried to do everything myself is so I could have someone professionally handle the master bath.  So.. here we go... Master Bath progress

From This:

To this!

and now this

Master Bedroom Befores and Afters

This room use to be the room my grandfather used as an office or generally to store his ... "stuff" in. When I came back home from California this is what it looked like.   I'll never forget picking up pieces of paper to find roaches scurrying around.... ahh those were the days....





When I started cleaning out the .. hoarding... he had a hard time letting go of a lot of stuff. So I told him he could keep it if he put it in "his room" meaning his office. The good thing about that is I got rid of about 4 porch loads full of stuff but the bad part is I ended up with a room in the house filled to the ceiling with shit.

Finally, I convinced my mom to help one afternoon and Mom, my step-dad, and my friend Josh and I went in there like a swat team while he was at work and started pitching and loading stuff onto the porch. 3 big black trash bags full of junk we threw away and another porch load of stuff we donated to AmVets. I dusted, painted, painted molding and baseboards, the windows of course are new, I ripped up the carpet, sanded the floors, finished them, put on a layer of poly (I've since been told I need like... six layers of poly so I'll do that) and installed new wall sconces from lamps I converted so I could put them on the wall.

Still need to buy a bed frame and paint the ceiling, but here's where we are now.





The evolution of what once was and now is the downstairs master bedroom.

Stairs Sanded, stained, poly

Ohhhh those were the days.  Here's what I did to the stairs.  The biggest problem with refinishing hardwoods on the stairs is you can't use that giant machine that is so effective.  I had to hand sand them all with the orbital sander and by hand.  Booo!  But they're done now :)

 

That's my grandfather - he's helping.

 ew

This is them cleaned off and sanded

Then stained

Then Poly put on - so far 3 layers... I need 6 - you'd be surprised how hard it is to find 8-9 hours where no one would be using the stairs or the hallway...

Where all the magic happens

Or at the very least where all my stuff is...  My bedroom is closer and closer to being finished.  The lighting went in and I painted my ceiling but ran out of paint for one area... oops... so closer and closer.

This is taken from the front window - except I moved the book shelf to the triangle

Giant triangle where I moved the bookshelf and added another one as well as wall shelves 

 Pic of the other side of the room - the "sitting area" this is taken from sitting on my bed

The new lights!  There use to be a ceiling fan here ... but it's gone now and it's got 4 lights in the ceiling rather than hanging down.

UPDATED: Office Floors Sanded... stained

And poly put on:

Bring on the awesome floors.  Here's the thing about these floors - they're incredibly light.  So the stain that I mixed for the living room floors didn't work at all not a match - not even close.  So I tried to mix it darker that wasn't right, then mixed it again darker... still nothing.  But the darker can of stain was too dark.  So basically I ended up dipping my brush in the dark stain, then the light stain and then mixing the color each brush stroke at a time.  Hopefully this doesn't end up looking bad.

You can kind of see the lightest parts where it was dry.  You're supposed to wipe them down with water before you put the stain on.  I think it's supposed to "open the grain" er somethin...

My bedroom begins to take shape

Remember that one time I started taking wallpaper off the walls in my bedroom thinking it would be a weekend project?  Ha.. hahaha ... that's a funny one.  Turns out taking wallpaper off of sheetrock is impossible.  About two weeks later I finally got it done and painted.  The carpet was put in the next day and over that following weekend I started putting things into place.







Pulling off more wallpaper

painting book cases

I have a bed ... in my bedroom now... that I could reasonably sleep in if I really wanted to!

I'm going to put my Bette Paige painting above the bed and the blue Audry one is across the room but that area isn't clean and organized yet.  not that this one is really... but ya know... progress....

No idea how to organize this.  I have an old diner bar table and barstools from my kitchen when I lived in California.  What the hell do I do with them?  Plus this whole area is kinda difficult to navigate...

ideas?

Process of he Dinning Room Floors

Last week I began the adventure of the dinning room floors.  You guessed it... more paint all over them.  My guess is that during the 90's when my grandpa sent the house on fire (bless his heart) everything was painted, new carpet, etc... and in the process the people who were hired decided... they don't care they're going to put carpet over these floors so we'll just paint them.  So they did.  And now I want them to die. 











The next adventure was that I refuse to go to Lowe's to get the sander again.... ever...  So I went to Home Depot and got a drum sander.  Oh my god... best decision ever.  That thing sanded the hell outa the floor.  So this pic is the "let the games begin" pic.

Results!


















Paint ain't got nothin on me :)

being stained

Stained floors!!

2 layers of poly so far - but my friend Mark tells me I need like... six...  But OMG it looks so beautiful!!!

Looks like an actual dinning room now :)