I recently had my house on the market trying to sell it for a little while... well that didn't work out... and mostly because I still have baseboard heating and a little window air conditioner for a 2 story house (and it gets HOT where I live in the summer)... that was the main reason that people gave for not wanting to by my house... so I thought about it for awhile and then thought well fine! I'll just stay! :o)
I don't NEED to move... there are some things I would like to have that I don't have here, like a garage, but aside from a few annoyances like that I'm happy here. I recently saw a quote or something about loving what you have...So I'm staying!
I took it off the market and started the paperwork to have a heating and air system put in... for my own comfort and resale value in the future. But first, I wanted to have the hardwood floors on the main level redone... this house was built in 1944 and I'm
pretty sure the finish on the floors is original! It was completely worn through to bare floors in many areas. Here are some shots from when I first bought the house. It's easier to see the floors without all my stuff in here.
This is the dining room looking from the living room... it doesn't look too bad from these pictures but it really needs to be refinished.
And this is from the dining room end of the house looking at the front door. I think if you click on the pictures to enlarge them you'll be able to see better.
And this is from the stairs over by the front door looking down into the living room... not looking too bad here... but over on the left, under that huge window there were lots of huge, deep scratches in the floor... the previous owner had a cat so I'm blaming that!
Now mind you these are pictures
before I moved in... I have painted since then. Here's what the floor looks like now, after sanding. (No, I didn't do it myself... I thought about it... until I watched a You Tube video and quickly changed my mind after I saw how much work the whole process would be!)
See? you can see I've painted... see my
striped wall in the dining room?!
Looks much nicer already... but boy-oh-boy what a mess... even with the "dustless" sander there is dust EVERYWHERE!! And my kitchen is FULL of my furniture... thankfully most of my furniture is still in storage (I rented a storage unit to clear out a little while I was trying to sell it).
It still needs some more sanding with finer grade sand paper. I've decided to go dark!!! Yay! Like this:
Or maybe even a little darker... like this!!
I can't wait to see the finished product in a couple of days! I also have some other projects... see this wall??
On the other side is the kitchen (the fireplace is electric, so it moves!)
Here's another shot before I painted... the doorway over on the right goes into the kitchen. Well, when I was house hunting while I had mine up for sale I really fell in love with the open concept that is so popular right now... so I'm having a hole knocked in that wall and a bar put in! It won't be completely "open" but enough to make it feel more like the homes I liked!
Here is what it looks like on the kitchen side:
It's the wall with the ladder leaning up against it... the bricks are the chimney coming up from the fireplace in the basement. I like the look of the brick so we are going to try and have it exposed on the living room side as well... we'll see how it goes! (and again... no... I'm not doing it... I do have skills but not these kinds of skills!)
Aaaannnndddd.... once the new heating and air system is installed I am rearranging the whole dang house practically!! My bedroom (now in the basement) is going upstairs...to one of the actual bedrooms that's up there... and the basement will be a family room as it was originally intended.
This room upstairs will be my bedroom eventually...
It was my daughter's room when we first moved in... then she moved out and now it's my craft studio which will also be moving downstairs.
So stay tuned to see the new dark stained floors and everything!!!
