2nd coat!

This weekend we rented a floor sander from Home Depot and set about tackling our new wood floors. Chris used 120 grit sandpaper and 4 passes. We also had to scrub the pencil marks off and do the edges by hand. (We used 80 grit on the edges and it turned out pretty uniform).

The next step was to apply conditioner and then rub it off. This photo shows the floors with conditioner, it didn’t look any different but you could definitely feel a difference.

Then we applied the stain. Unfortunately the color was very anti-climatic and basically looked exactly the same but with some shine. We used stain and polyurethane seal in 1 which is probably why the color was so light. We’ll try a second coat today and see what happens. We have to sand it with 000 steel wool before applying the second coat though.

Here you can see the color of the living room next door, the color of the raw wood without any conditioner or stain, and the color of the stain. It’s easy to tell the difference between the stained and unstained here, but you can see it has a long way to go to look like the rest of the house.

We’ve got the back downstairs bedroom to tackle today! I think now that we have a system it’ll go a lot faster.

I owe so many updates! I have no excuses except that we’ve been really busy. 2 weeks ago we volunteered with the Interfaith Hospitality Network and stayed over 2 nights plus brought dinner another day for 3 homeless families in the rotation. 2 weekends ago we went to Ohio for Chris’s family reunion, and last weekend we went to Wilmington to visit Rane. We slacked a bit on the house and blog updates as a result.

So many new things though! Yesterday we had this bad boy and his dryer-comrade delivered. Unfortunately they need to stack and I hadn’t bought a stacking kit. The weird thing about this was the overwhelming feeling of deja-vu this gave me.  For now the washer is scooted out from the walls but you can kind of see how much space there will be. They’ll come back next Saturday to stack them (I think the salesperson should have sold me this, I was buying stack-able units after all) and then we’ll be able to install the sink.

Here are Chris and I painting in Mary Kyle’s unit. We’re doing accent walls so this room will stay the light blue color and just this wall will be pink. It’s a big wall but I think it will look more accent-like once she hangs curtains.

Paint 🙂 This first picture is without gutters and the second two are with. We LOVE having gutters. Everything was all kinds of crazy without them. Any time I’m outside I want to just look at the house and sigh. Although you can tell that the yard is completely out-of-control now, but that’s on our short list now. As soon as the porta-potty leaves we’ll be out of excuses.

With some free time in the evenings we’ve even been putting things on the walls! Just in the living room, but we’ve hung some mantle art in the form of 3D flowers (once we paint this room gray this will not be quite as feminine), we’ve started my gallery wall, and we’ve hung one hanger for a big mirror across from the gallery wall. Things are still a mess but they’re looking up!

We’re going to Ohio this weekend so I got off work at lunch to find PAINT! I’m completely in love with it, both the siding color and the trim. You can see on the front porch that we will be replacing the back 2 columns of the porch so they haven’t been painted yet. I’m definitely going to be some anxious to get rid of the porta potty and warning signs since a little bit of landscaping and a cared for lawn will make this house the most beautiful house ever! (A bit biased perhaps?)

This house won’t be “finished” for a very long time, possibly ever, but having a functional construction-free zone is so close I can taste it 🙂

Primer complete!

…and whats this? PAINT?!?

Starting to look like we live here…

This last weekend was amazingly productive for us. What with finishing up the bathroom tile/paint on Saturday and painting the side door and foyer on Sunday, we were quite content to sit down, watch TV, and pat ourselves on the back.

Monday night we continued our productive streak by picking up a fridge (free!) from a house that was about to be bulldozed. Mom came out to help us load it and then Chris unloaded it single handedly. It’s a nice KitchenAid with stainless steel doors and an ice maker which we may or may not get to work. Even more exciting then our new fridge was to come home in the dark, squint at the house, and say “PRIMER!” We no longer live in a naked house! YAY! This means paint is only just around the corner and paint is really going to bring this old house to a whole new level. 🙂

This bathroom, in the back of the house on the first floor was one of the most awkward areas in the house. You can see that the shower came out of a wall built in the middle of the room leaving a little alcove between the entrance wall and the tub. But what can you do with a 5’8″ x7’2″ space?

Well you can take things out…

…and put them back very deliberately. There’s no denying that this will be an economy bathroom but we’re thinking we can do more with the space then what we started with.

The first thing we bought for this bathroom was a pedestal sink off craigslist. I had my Mom pick 2 of them up in one day ($70 for both of them– both less than a year old and included fixtures) and they’ve been hanging out in the living room for a couple months now. I’m pretty sure we did not actually own the house when I bought them. I think pedestal sinks look great in historic homes but they also make the room feel bigger. I was a little worried about giving up the under-sink storage that the original unit had, but most of that space is wasted on pipes and gets pretty gross.

The second thing we bought was a stand alone shower. Since we’ll be living exclusively on the first floor for a bit (renting out the upstairs units) we couldn’t get rid of the shower altogether, but we don’t think we’ll be missing the bath portion. We went for a rounded unit because we thought it would make the room feel bigger (Although Chris says we don’t want it to feel bigger, we want it to be bigger.)

We still have to buy a washer/dryer which will put us at a solid 3/4 bath with laundry room in this little space. It’s definitely not going to be a lounge-around-spend-the-day-in bathroom, but it will be functional and I think it will be perfect once we no longer have any bedrooms on the first floor and the shower only gets used by occasional out-of-town guests.

So tiling this bathroom was our first real DIY project and all the satisfaction that goes with that. We measured our tiles and then got them cut at Lowes (fo free!)

The yellow we picked out is one of the historic colors Valspar does, based on the Homestead Resort where we spent part of our honeymoon. I’m going to have to replace the light in here with something whiter, but I’m really quite pleased. We painted before the grout since we’ve heard it is easier to clean paint off the tile then the grout.

The contractors installed the baseboards, I’m not sure if they’re going to finish the left side to match the right? Hopefully.

New dry wall. We’ve enclosed the stairs again so they are only accessible from the outside. Eventually we’ll take this out when we stop renting the upstairs.

New crawlspace door, I quite like it!

We installed a toilet in the upstairs unit Mary Kyle will live in. It was very satisfying.

New side entrance door. We bought paint for this, but it’s been raining a lot and we need to wait for a dry day since the door is getting wet.

I’d like to say we’ll never take floors for granted again, but it’s probably just not true. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Nothing very exciting seemed to be happening at the house this week. They did pass the plumbing rough-in inspection, have the termite treatment done, scrape some more paint, tweak some small electrical concerns, and get this frame built. We’re at a point where some of the last things remaining are big dramatic things (floors, exterior paint) so we’re chomping at the bit to get some of it done. With the floors we’re just waiting on the planks to come in from the mill, so heres to hoping it comes in this week.