The Fixer Upper House and Garden

The Living Room

Originally we had big plans for changing the function of the living room, including building columned half-walls that would separate the main, narrow section from a small attached sunroom. This would have created a lovely office for moi...but after we decided to install a storm drain in the yard...well...the lovely office for moi got flushed away.

And this is OK, because the phoenix rises out of ashes...and the dough rises out of quickened yeast ... and May flowers spring from April rains ... Anyway, looking on the bright side: after we refinished the floors, painted the walls and cleaned up the fireplace, the living room emerged as the go-to place for curling up, catlike, in a comfy chair with the Sunday paper, and reading it all, even the Auto section and the circulars from Macy's and Target. It's a great place to go to play board games, or visit with a friend, or chat on the phone. And the room's spaciousness deceives visitors into thinking the house is a bit bigger than it really is.

The living room is only partially furnished at this moment in time due to fund compromisation (I just made up that word). You can see how nicely the floors turned out:

The fireplace bricks are the exact same color and texture as chocolate chip cookie dough before you dump in the bag of chocolate chips:

 

Did I mention how nicely the floors turned out?

Get out your sunglasses! The walls were really really white

And this:

Photos Of ...

The floors looked spectacular for the 15 minutes that I saw them last week. The next day, GC taped a sign on the front door that said "Remove Shoes: Floors Just Refinished." This prompted the painters to tape heavy craft paper over the floors, so they could keep wearing their boots. This is good for the feet, good for the floors and good for the olefactory system.

Here are several photos of the work that's been going on recently. Great thought, care and effort went into every one of these projects by all involved--and not a little bit of agonizing!

The kitchen is shrouded in plastic:

Painting the bricks lightened up the kitchen a lot--the wall was once the exterior of the house. After we built the addition, Miguel had the idea to place HVAC ducts on both sides of the stained-glass window, creating a little desk-niche.

Here's what the refinished floors look like...under cover:

White snow, blue sky, new addition:

 

Before the recent spring snow storm, Nawkaw came out to stain the new bricks. I think they look good but Husband says "there's not enough red." Oh well.

The mudroom is multi-functional, including cubbies, a coat closest, nooks for dog beds and lots of shelves for stuff (opposite the cubbies). The Dutch door will come in handy when muddy paws need to be contained. To maximize light in the kitchen, we decided to not use the top half of the door.

This next photo shows what happens when you trim Motawi tiles. I will post about this in detail later, but if you're considering using hand-glazed tiles, just know you can't trim the field tiles that have variations in shading. Instead of trimming them to fit, you can order custom-sizes from Motwawi for just $4 more per tile:

The "Shaker Beige" paint on these plaster walls frames the old door and windows:

No matter what's going on in life, you still need to walk the dogs ...

 

... And dance!

Floor Refinishing

If not for the Polish music drifting from the basement, I'd think I was alone in the house. It's so quiet, so empty. So ... very ... foreign. Sunlight mingles with dust in the living room and I wonder what's more striking: sunshine after a dark winter ... or is it the floor?

GC and his crew have cleared out the house. Gone are the ladders, saws and cans of paint, the scraps of wood, piles of molding and plastic bins over-flowing with trash. The house has been emptied for tomorrow's appointment with the hard-wood floor refinishers.

The bride is donning her veil.

I'm very nervous. I OK'd the floor stain weeks ago based on a four-inch test area in front of the refrigerator. We tested several colors, with the end goal of having very light floors but not so light that they look naked. We tried cherry, golden oak, natural, driftwood, early American and some other stains whose names escape me now. We also tried 50-50 blends, but I didn't love anything. How do you love something you can't envision? Emmanual, the floor-refinishing overseer, was adamant that I go with natural, which looked fine on the new floors but yellow on the old. A decorator urged me to blend natural with "just a touch of brown but no yellow or red." The painter suggested cherry to match the cabinets, but to my eye it was too matchy-matchy. Miguel the architect liked early American. I felt it would be OK if it was lighter, but when GC mixed early American with natural, the blend came out yellowish on our old, yellow-oak floors. In fact, none of the blended stains turned out well. Adding to the dilemma is that old floors take color differently than new ones.

So I decided to move on. I OK'd early American and let it go. But now, as I stand on dusty floors in this sunny room waiting for the floor guys to arrive on a day that's so bright my head hurts, the worries creep in. What if it's too dark? Too brown? Too mottled? What if I hate it?

Well, whatever goes down this week will be better than what's there now.

The hallway floors are a dark stain and are in dubious condition:

Since we expanded the dining room, it has both old and new floorboards:

The stairs are a very ugly orangish-yellowish stain that doesn't match the rest of the house: