DIY Floor Refinishing

I had mentioned that our dining room floor was a nightmare. 

 

After removing this icky carpet...

 

 

I found this...

 

And quickly went into a panic.

 

It is typical in my house for me to announce I am going to do something and for my husband to tell me what a horrible idea he thinks it is.  This happens to be one of those such things.

 

However, I did have reasonable expectations that this would go okay.  I had removed all of the rest of the carpeting from the house and the wood was fine.  Not perfect but certainly better than someone else's dirty old carpet.

 

I tried everything to remove this black padding that was glued to the floor.

 

I scrubbed.

 

I Googled.

 

And scrubbed.

 

And Googled.

 

I tried to remove it with a putty knife.

 

Nothing worked and my Google searches were coming up empty!

 

And finally after two days of sitting in the middle of this stinky filth... it dawned on me.

 

Stripper!

 

How had I not thought of this sooner?!

 

So I loaded up and headed to the hardware store.

 

(Admittedly, this should have been my first stop.)

 

While I was there looking for furniture stripper, I found this...

 

 

 

Perfect!

 

And rented this...

 

 

Really, why didn't I come here first?!

 

When I got home I liberally applied the adhesive remover to the entire floor.  The black padding and adhesive started to bubble immediately and was all removed within a half hour.

 

 

 

Really... I sat there for two days, and this was all it took.

 

After letting the floor dry I began sanding and within a few hours was finished.

 

I had thought long and hard about 15 min. while I was in the store about how I wanted to finish the floor. 

 

The floor is the original to the home, small planked, oak wood floor.  Normally,  you do not see these types of floors stained.  But... I really do not care for oak all that much.  So I decided I was going to stain my floor.

 

I chose a dark redish color and began applying with old rags.

 

 

After the first coat I decided I needed to go a little darker so I applied a second.

 

 

After the second coat of stain it was time to begin sealing the floor.

 

I applied 4 coats of floor polyurethane over several days to the floor, gently sanding the floor in between coats with steal wool and cleaning with a tac cloth to remove any debris.

(Each coat of polyurethane must dry for 8 hours before the next coat can be applied.)

 

The final result... a beautiful restored wood floor.

 

 

 

Fabulous Find!

What did I find out on my venture today????

Six Brand NEW Flexsteel dining room chairs.

Price... $300 for the set of 6!

Decorating ADD

I can't seem to find my style in this house.  I'm not sure what happened but somehow... I've lost it.

In the past month I have painted my hallway upstairs twice and have completely hated it both times. 

I started to work on my oldest son's bedroom but can't seem to find bedding and have reached a standstill. 

My kitchen is half completed.

My dining room sits empty.

I am just in a funk.

I keep moving from one room to another never really completing anything.  I have decorating ADD.  It's horrible and it's suffocating.

I need to complete something.

So... welcome to my living room.  My latest turn on this decorating roller coaster.

When we moved in I painted the living room the same color as the living room in our prior home thinking that it worked well with everything we had and looked amazing in our old house.  I was often complimented on how cute and homey that room was.  Ahhhh... my old house with it's pretty flat walls and crown molding.

The color is okay here.  But even with all of these windows in this room it just always seems dark.  Not helped at all by not having any overhead lighting that can be turned on at night.

This is my free Craigslist piano by the way.  It's pretty cool and fits perfectly into this goofy little nook.  It has also, as you can tell, become the place to put things that I don't know what to do with.

So, this room just isn't doing it for me... at all.

But this one is...

And so is this one...

Pottery Barn... my love...

My goal is to turn my 'frumpy caught in limbo of my previous house' living room into something beautiful. 

I need to let go of the house I had and work with what I HAVE and hopefully this will help bring on some good changes in this house. 

My inability to let go of what I had and embrace what we now have has made the most menial of tasks a challenge.  Something as small as replacing the throw pillows in the living room after the dog destroyed all but one, has left me indecisive and stuck... with one throw pillow it so seems.

So moving forward, I will embrace what I have.

Our House

I thought I would share a few pictures of the inside of our house from the day we closed.  Again, keep in mind, this is what I enjoy to do so yes, I actually did pick this house.  My husband was talked into this by my explaining that we would be doubling our square footage, would have closets for everyone, an acre of yard and the big sell... he would no longer hit his head on fixtures or ceiling fans.  He's around 6'4 so our 8' ceilings in our old house were miserable for him.  Not to mention - this house was a STEAL!

This is our living room on the day we closed.

You can see some of the great features that drew me to this house.  The downstairs has all of the original woodwork still in place and it is beautiful, or will be someday.

The original front door from over a hundred years ago is still there.

Tons of windows and tons of natural light.  That also comes with tons of windows that need restoring but that's okay.  Or at least that's what I tell my husband.

The living room opens up to the dining room.  That filthy carpet was thrown away before we ever moved in.  But that woodwork is amazing.

This is the other side of the dining room.  It has a huge picture window.  It is ridiculously large.  I believe it is 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide.  I don't remember for sure... I just know it took me a million yards of fabric to make the curtains to cover it.  Notice the bushes outside the window.  The house was so neglected that the bushes were overgrown up to the second story.  The pile of junk is the tile and fixtures that I came armed with on day one.

I came with tile and fixtures because of this...

Not only the world's ugliest bathroom... but most disgusting on top of it!

Hard to believe that this is what I asked for isn't it?

Don't worry, the bathroom isn't there anymore.  I had it walls and all in a dump trailer by the end of the first weekend.

My Kitchen

When we bought this house we certainly weren't purchasing it for the house it was but for the house it could be. 

I have been working on the kitchen since about day... 3.  Six months later I am still not finished but am trying to get back on track.  There were several obstacles in the way on getting this project completed such as life in general.  At any rate, somewhere in the middle of the kitchen not being completed I completely switched gears on the direction of what I wanted.  This may or may not have been influenced by my husband telling me daily that he hated my wall color choice.

This is how my kitchen started.  Like I said... I was looking at the potential in the house.

Yes, those are Michigan blue and gold cabinets and walls.  Absolutely putrid.

This is the other side of the room.

Not any better I know.

This far end is our little kitchen eat in or dining area.  Looks just like something out of Better Homes and Gardens doesn't it!

Somewhere there is a 'what the heck did we do!' picture of my husband sticking his head in the itty bitty wall oven.  Yes, our closing day was special.