Wood Works

As mentioned in previous posts, we refinished the hardwoods and our banister not soon after we closed on our house. We can't claim the refinishing of the hardwoods as our own work--we gladly hired someone to do that after many many warnings against refinishing them ourselves. However, Hunter and Stuart refinished the banister and painted the spindles on the stairs and they turned out great. My June post has before pictures of the banister--looks a lot different now!




And on to the hardwoods. Below is a before picture of some wood that is in our upstairs closet. This is the only flooring we didn't have refinished because we are eventually going to turn it into a master bath. But it's a good thing we didn't touch them because I have no other before pictures of the floors. This picture really does them too much justice, too--they were in terrible terrible shape, particularly downstairs. We also had termite damage...yikes.com. But now they are beautiful and are in pretty much every room of our house!

This is a picture of the downstairs floors--they are oak.

This is a picture of the upstairs floors--they are pine.


Hope you enjoyed!

Some Progress, Finally!

Hello everyone! I've finally got some pictures of our progress to post. Stuart has been working most days to de-wallpaper every room and we have begun to pick out paint colors. The weekend of the 4th of July we were able to paint the walls and moulding in the living room--Seashore Fog paint and high gloss white. Pictures are below!

These are some before pictures. Stuart is patching holes and you can see our various array of paint colors we tested before deciding on the light gray/blue (and for those of you wondering about the bright pink, that's our spackling--it goes on pink and dries white).





These windows were a pain...there are 3 in the room and Stuart and I each started scraping one. We scraped paint for about 8 hours and still didn't get everything off. And realized halfway through that we were probably scraping lead--yikes. So we gave up on the idea of perfectly glossed moulding and didn't even attempt to scrape the third window.




And the painting begins...Stuart hadn't ever painted before so I did the walls while he scraped and cleaned the baseboards.



And the dreaded taping off of the windows. 3 windows, 24 panes each, 4 pieces of tape per each pane, cut to size. You do the math and think about how terrible that is. Another task for me...Stuart wasn't quite able to grasp that if tape is ripped unevenly and just a little sticks to the moulding, that is going to show the old color once the tape comes down...He DID tape off the last window, though, after watching me do 48 panes!







And the painting is complete! Now if we could only get enough furniture to fill up the room...





This is the only thing we have really bought for the living room thus far (other than Stuart's unauthorized flat screen purchase...), but it was our inspiration for the color and now we (I) are shopping for a couch.



That's it for now--progress is slow, but so much fun!

Sanding the Stairs

After the floors were refinished (will post pictures soon, I promise), we decided that the first project should be sanding and restaining the banister to the stairs. As Stuart is doing most of the work himself, I figured this would be a small project with quick results to get him motivated for the rest of the house! He also had the help of my brother and they completed the project in about 2 days.



The banister had a very old stain on it that became way more noticeable after the hardwoods were refinished. The above picture was taken after an initial sanding was done.



And the light wood color is revealed with a little elbow grease...





Props to Hunter and Stuart for their extensive efforts to protect the floors during the process! They also did some work on the stair risers but we have a little more to do with that...Next post will be after pictures of the newly stained banister. Thanks for following!

I Can't Believe I've Started A Blog

That's right--I can't believe this. None the less, I've started a blog to document the renovation of my fiance's and my first home. We recently purchased the home in April 2010 in North Carolina. Built in 1928, the house has only been owned by one family until now. Thus, our homeowning and renovating adventure begins.



Our house is a little over 2,000 square ft with 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. I've included several pictures below of the house when we purchased it.

Living Room:


Dining Room:



Pitiful Kitchen:



Downstairs Bathroom:



Guest Bedroom/Office 1:


Guest Bedroom 2:


Master Bedroom:


Upstairs Bath:


So there it is ladies and gentlemen! Our first house. Although some of the floors look like they are in good condition from these pictures, they all needed refinishing. We recently had them refinished and I will post some pictures in my next entry. Also, Stuart (my fiance) and Hunter (my brother) have begun to strip/sand/paint/stain our banister, stairs, and spindles. Will also post pictures of that process!

The renovation is going to be quite an adventure, as Stuart nor I have any real experience with this sort of thing. However, we are eager to learn and love our old house!