Finally taking a breath

I've had to attend to a couple of emergencies which took me out of town and offline for a bit. I'm back, everything's OK, but I'm only just now catching up with my world again. Whew!

This project was started a few weeks ago. I/we finally finished it today, save for painting doors and installing one of them. It's technically the living room, and hopefully will be again after we build our addition, but for now it's my office-slash-living room and so hosts a slight mix of living room and office furniture. Still, I'm pleased and it is definitely a huge improvement over how the room has looked through all of its iterations since we bought the house almost 4 years ago.

We've had this flooring for a couple of years, just waiting in boxes for us. We decided that the time was upon us and figured a long weekend and we'd have the floor in. We've been at this remodeling for a while now. We should've known better.

We didn't figure time for the baseboards which needed to be painted, cut and installed. Or the crown molding. Or completely tearing out and rebuilding a door frame because the "new" (vs. how we bought the house) drywall in the family room extended out past the existing frame by a good inch. Or an unexpected mad-dash trip. Or the 1,001 other little fiddly things (like actually locating and then unpacking the boxes which hold the living room knick-knacks) which need doing when you're finishing a room. Laying the floor was relatively easy and each of the other projects weren't too difficult either. But add them all together and it's more than a weekend. Or two.

This is the finished room ... except for those doors and hanging some pictures on the bare walls.


This is what the same angle of the room looked like with the previous owners' stuff in it, complete with dark panelling, built in Formica cabinets, and decades old, yellowing photos on the walls . Lover-ly, ain't it? You're lucky this isn't Scratch 'n Sniff, as the house used to smell as bad as it looked.


Fast (?) forward 3+ years and this is my view out the (newly framed) window. I love it! Not so much on the icky concrete edging and weeds out there. All in time, all in time.


The chairs sitting at either side of the window belonged to my parents. They are quite 1970s and will be replaced at some point after all the remodeling dust settles. But to my eye they almost sort of go with the whole look in the room, and they bring back memories of my childhood which feels as comfortable as actually sitting in them. So for now, they'll be around and I'll laugh at their outward ugliness and smile at their inner beauty.

If you want to see the whole project from start to finish, here are the links:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

If you want to try out a cool nail gun or learn how to lay floors, c'mon by. We're starting on the adjoining family room next week. If I finish painting the doors by then.

Or maybe I'll sew something this weekend instead. ;-)