Floored

If you've never visited our home, here are a few real life pictures (complete with lots of clutter) of what the entrance of our home has looked like for the last three years.

Upon entering the door there has been an office area with a desk and lots of bookshelves straight ahead and to the left a dining area.

 

This picture was taken at our first Maryland Thanksgiving. 
Xandra was 15 months old in this picture and using a spoon all by herself for the first time.

After 18 months of bantering and scheming from his wife, Joe decided in July that we should take the plunge, rip up the carpet, and do something with the floors underneath. 

Our first task, which was no small task, was to empty the room of its contents. Have I mentioned we own a lot of books and bookshelves? We really came to understand this personally as we took those books off the shelves and walked them pile by pile across the house to our sunroom. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of our sunroom as a storage facility. Let's just say it was stuffed to the gills. So was our fireplace which housed various pieces of furniture and the top bunk of the girls' bed.

This left a nice, big, empty room with stained carpet.

How stained was the carpet?

Very stained.  I can only assume that the white stripe of carpet we found under the transition piece to the hallway is the original color of the carpet.  Words that come to mind:  gross, wow, unbelievable, how is that possible?

Once the carpet was ripped up and Joe painstakingly removed every last piece of tack strip and nails, we were left with the difficult decision of whether to refinish the reasonable looking hardwood floors we found or to lay down laminate.  We deliberated and deliberated and deliberated.  We priced it out, thought, considered and discussed leaving it as is to avoid making a decision.  As the birth of Joey arrived in September, we had finally made a decision to refinish the floors, but hadn't made any moves to doing any of the actual work.

When Joey was 10 days old we decided, against our better judgment, as is so often the case with us, the time was right to refinish the floors.  Let me pause right now to say to anyone who reads this blog and has a home, marriage, or mental stability they value:  DO NOT TRY what you are about to see at home with a 10 day old.   Most people will not need that warning, but just in case you think this is a good idea, it's not! 

I don't have any pictures from the actual process of the refinishing ( I was much too grumpy after listening to the loud, obnoxious sander for 1 1/2 days to be happily taking pictures of what I was sure was to be the death of me and/or my sanity), but I do have a few shots of our living arrangements.  While Joe was refinishing the floors we moved into our kitchen/living room/bathroom side of the house.  The entrance to the office/dining room was taped off thereby eliminating our use of our bedrooms and second bath.  For five days we lived like this:

Xandra and Theia slept on the floor of the bathroom/laundry room, Aliyah slept in a crib in the art studio, Trisha slept on a living room couch, Joe slept on the living room floor, and Joey slept in his basket in the living room.  After the five days were up and just before I cracked up, we had floor that looked like this:

Beautifully done, Joe!

Nearly four months after we started this project,

six and a half weeks after we started sanding the floor,

and after five days of constant noise from sanders and fans,

 the house and this room are finally back together. 

While I appreciate and enjoy the room as we now have it, new, beautiful floors and all,

I think I'm ready for a nice, long home improvement break.

Although, I can't help noticing how old and crusty those windows look next to those nice new floors.  Maybe we should think about replacing those next...after all, the baby is almost nine weeks old now.