Dining and Living Room Updates

Sorry about the delay...we decided to have Chris' brother's birthday party at our house last night, which meant that we went into PROJECT OVERDRIVE, spending every waking moment painting/caulking/taping. The good news is, though, that it's done...for now.

After the floors were finished, we still had a lot to do. We ripped up the exisiting baseboards before the floors were done, laughing about how silly the former owner was. "Who puts window casing as baseboard? What a silly gentleman!"

We were wrong. He knew exactly what he was doing. Because when we pulled up the baseboards, we found spaces between the floors and the walls as big as three inches. EEEEEEEEeeeeek.

So then it became "how the crap do we fill in these spaces?" Answer: Spray Foam insulation. We sprayed it into the cracks, let it cure overnight, and cut it down to fit the spaces. Honestly, we could feel the difference immediately - much less drafty! I wanted to rush out and buy about two dozen cans and spray foam everything, but Chris kept me focused on the job at hand.

The other issue was that the baseboards that we bought were too big to fit in the miter saw. We ended up having to use a $50 miter box to make all the corner cuts. That, my friends, sucked.

In the end, the project looked a little like this:

Featured: the fine tools we used to create these cuts. It was part 'Little House' and part maddening. 

Living room before baseboards

No baseboards. Sad. 

Check out that gap!


Once the baseboards went in, we decided to go hog wild and put a chair rail in the dining room. We were considering trying to install our own wainscoting, but after watching this fine video about how to do it, decided that we did not have enough time/expertise/patience. Instead, we put 2 coats of Kilz and 1 coat of super mega high gloss underneath the chair rail. It looks great, and maybe someday we'll get around to putting up some real (or fake?) wainscoting afterall.

This project eliminated the "under the sea" feel to our dining room that was starting to make me a little nuts. 

Before

Before, piano wall

Before, threshold

Chair rail and baseboards up!

Chair rail and baseboards, piano wall

Don't tell the rest of the house, but this is my favorite wall...basement/bathroom wall

Threshold side, chair rail and baseboards

Pardon the mess

Poor Penny and Leo got exiled during this project.

First coat of Kilz to block the color below

Favorite wall. Omg. 

Top coat of high gloss. Perfection!

And here's my little dining room set up for a 'Downton Abbey' tea party...so perfect! This was a painstaking project but one that we wake up and sigh at every morning. At last, the dining room has been cared for!

New Floors!

It's been a long time coming, but we finally had our hardwood floors downstairs refinished. We went through 4-5 different companies before settling on one who specialized in historical renovations. Our floors are Heart Pine, a specific type of wood used widely in New England in the 19th century, dating our  floors to about 1840. How cool is that?? It also meant that restoring them would be pricey, so we opted to do as little replacing as possible.

Our darling flipper friend pulled up a wall and replaced a huge chunk of floor with laminate, so that was the first to go. It had buckled the floor (seeing as it wasn't even nailed down) so over time, it was creating a trip hazard between the living and dining room.

I hates it, Momma. I hates it.

As you can see in the pictures, there is a definite divide between the two rooms. Our plan was to use new boards to create a threshold. We ripped up the crappy baseboards to make this easier...LOTS more on this coming soon.

It took four days - one for repair, sand and first coat of urethane, and then three days of subsequent sanding and coats - of us being out of the house. It made for a stressful Christmas week, though we have to give Chris' parents a holla for taking us and los Pomeranians in for a whole week. We stopped in to the house every night to check in. Here's the summary:

Tuesday - SO yellowy after the first sand:

Wednesday: A bit darker. 

 Thursday: More of the same, a bit darker with curing time. 

 FINISHED: Beautifully shiny hardwood floors that we DO NOT trip over as often. The floor guys have yet to solve our klutziness. These are knockout beautiful. 

 

 To celebrate, we will NOT be replacing our massive 9x13 rug - instead, we found these perfect little jobbies to anchor our couches to the floor. No scratching, no wandering furniture, no problems. We are so glad this finally got done!

Tomorrow - baseboard update!

Where Have We Been?!

We have been terrible bloggers. Again. For the record, we unplugged our internet on Dec. 24th to start breaking set for a project (more to come!) and we plugged it back in...today. Okay, maybe it was plugged in from time to time over the last few weeks, but never long enough to blog. I have SO many updates to share so this is my Blog Week - I promise! I'll update all our Christmas projects and show you all the progress we've made to our little shack. So much is happening!

More soon!