worky-worky

Like any good homeowners we took advantage of our three day weekend to work on our house. Because we thought we should put the labor into Labor Day? I'm sorry. It's late.

Since the ceiling guy bailed for the weekend we turned our energies on to things we can control - no, not our children. Saturday my mom and I spent a good portion of the day painting the dining room. This is the best before picture I could find without sifting through all our pics. It went from taupey-pink to sunny yellow. I had mixed feelings about taking down the chair rail, but I'm glad I did. The past owners had an affinity for Sienna Stone and they'd sprayed the chair rail. Which means it was textured in a stone-like fashion and so even if I repainted it it would always be slightly reminiscent of Sienna Stone. After living with a copious amount of Sienna Stone I am sick to death of it. The highlight of the day had to be when I realized I could scrape the Sienna Stone off the outlet covers with a putty knife. So satisfying! Entryway chandelier I'm coming for you next!

So then the dining room looked great for like 12 hours. Even Guthrie - never the biggest fan of anything I choose - liked it the next morning at breakfast. "Mama, I do like your paint, but only when the sun shines on it." Thank goodness they're south facing windows so she won't hate it for most of the day. And I really really like it with the gray we painted in the living room - I guess I never showed you those pictures, did I? Well, we'll do that before and after later on. Yay for thematic blogging!Although the paint did make the carpet look even more dingy and I kept holding up the sample piece of the new floor against the wall. I'm a dork like that.

I haven't showed you a picture of what the floor will be have I? Here's the closest I could find:
I heart it very much.

So then, after a few minutes in our sunny, pristine dining room John tore up the carpet.


It is harder to notice the lovely walls with the mostly unfinished, old, thank goodness we bought new floor because this would have taken a lot of work to save, floors. We thought that was going to be a huge project, but I left John in his flannel pjs with a one foot wide section torn up and ran some errands. When I came home 2 or so hours later it was done. There are still a bunch of staples to take out, but I'm not sure that we really need to if we're putting stuff over it - what do you think?

The entryway floor demo'd super quick- like an hour and a half? And most of that was moving things in and out - the furniture and then the laminate.

So we have one room left to do before the floor guy comes back. Before then though is the ceiling and painting the kitchen. And reassessing the furniture in our living room/entry way. There's been a lot of shifting around and some, hmm, I'd never thought of putting that there going on. Kind of fun, kind of exhausting.

Kind of want my house to be back together sooner rather than later. I'm holding October 1 in my mind, mostly because I love fall and I want to get the fall box out and decorate and get out seasonally appropriate toys for the kids, but only if there is no subflooring.