Cinderella Style

Even down to the singing, we scrubbed the floor in true Cinderella style over the weekend. I didn’t see myself in any soap bubbles and my voice isn’t as pretty as hers, but there was a dog (not a cat) tracking over the clean floor. Dave and I spent about 6 hours on our hands and knees scrubbing the dining room floor with brushes and putty knives. We were attempting to remove all of the old carpet pad and glue in order to decide if we would be able to get away with buffing the floors. Once we finished, we could still see the diamond pattern on the wood from the carpet pad. It was discouraging, but we’ve decided to hire someone to sand and refinish all of the hardwood. We can’t justify spending any more time scrubbing when it seems that we aren’t going to be able to get that pattern out, and we concluded that we aren’t ready to learn how to sand hardwoods ourselves. That’s a huge job, and I don’t want to mess it up. On a positive note, the floors will all be the same color and the new finish should last at least for our lifetime in the house. Not to mention, it will be beautiful. Dave is going to get some prices today, and hopefully we can get this done quickly. The mess is going to be horrendous, and the entire house will need to be scrubbed before we can paint.

We spent Sunday working in the backyard. We didn’t want to waste any time, but there really isn’t anything we can do inside until the sanding is complete. My uncle loaded up the old carpet and padding to take it to the dump. We cut the bushes around the back patio, raked the leaves out from under them, and cleaned out the little shed. I discovered that we have baby birds in the shed, so I’m hoping that they grow up and fly away before Dave gets ready to really start working in there. I knew there was a big bird because she has buzzed by us a couple of time, but I didn’t realize there were babies until I heard them squeaking while I was in there yesterday. My cousin is giving us a hot tub (because he’s tired of having it in his house), so we’ve decided to make that shed nice and put the hot tub in there. It should be really fun once it’s finished. I also found out that we have rosemary and strawberries growing in the flower bed on the patio. I think that is so cool, so I’ve decided to plant a few more herbs there and have my very own herb garden. It will be a lot more convenient than trying to find what I’m looking for in the grocery store.

That’s the weekend update.

A couple more pictures..

This is the guest room. I apologize for the blur, it was dark and my camera batteries were low so I was trying to hurry. We are going to keep this color for now because we both like it - it's a slate blue, not quite as baby blue as it looks here. We have already pulled up the carpet. By the way, this is the same carpet that was in the living/dining room. I really like this room because it has three good windows overlooking the backyard.

This is the master bedroom (for now). We will be painting it a cinnamon color to compliment our brown and khaki bedding and curtains. The carpet in this room is gone now, too. There is a very small bathroom with a shower off of this room (below), and of course, the tile is pink. For now, it will stay that way, but eventually I will redo it. The shower pan appears to be in bad shape, but I won't know if it leaks until we use it a few times.

I took this picture of the hallway to show what the hardwoods look like. After pulling up the carpet in the bedrooms and the dining room, we found that the hardwoods under the carpet are slightly darker than this. We also found that they are in pretty good shape, and our friends think we can get away with a good cleaning, buffing them, and putting a new coat of polyurethane on top. If this is what we do, we'll just live with two shades of hardwood, because we'd have to sand them all to get the same color. I don't want to sand if I don't have to because of the time and the mess it will create.

So far, we've removed all the carpet and carpet pad, all the staples that secure the carpet pad, and all of the carpet tack boards. We've started scraping the remaining carpet pad off the floor to prep for cleaning, but that will take some time. The plan for tonight is to do just that. I hope to be scrubbing the floors by this weekend. The power was turned on yesterday, so we are able to work later now and get more accomplished.

As you can see from a couple of the pictures above, The George has been helping with the remodeling. She has had to stay in the backyard for the last two nights because there were too many nails and tacks in the floor for her to be running around, but I'll let her come in tonight. She seems to like the new house and she's sniffed every inch of it, I think.

New House

This picture is our new house, and this is the new remodeling blog. I decided to try and keep life separate from remodeling, although at some point they will become one and the same for me (just not necessarily for the readers).

We closed on the house yesterday, and yesterday was Day 1 of the remodeling. The picture below is our soon-to-be dining / sitting room. I wanted a picture before the carpet was gone, but Dave was too quick for me. What will we do to this room?

The plan is to pull up the carpet (check) and refinish the hardwoods. Then I will paint and hang new curtains that aren't quite so ugly and old-people-smelly. It also needs an overhead light fixture. Basically, the half of the room by the windows will have nice, but comfy, chairs and a table for sitting and reading, chatting, etc. The other half will have the dining room furniture. It's the nicest room in the house, so it's worthy of the antique dining room suite, but I hated to waste all the good light from the windows, so it gets a sitting area too. At least that's the plan right now. It just may be a while before we find the sitting area furniture...

So, that's day one. Day two will consist of pulling the staples out of the hardwood in preparation for refinishing. Not very exciting, I know. We are also refinishing the floors in the upstairs bedrooms, so I'll post pictures of them later.