Once upon a time a couple bought a fixer-up. The very weekend they moved in they started tearing down wallpaper. And then they tore down a wall. Tiled some floors. Painted every room. And so on. Friday nights were spent at Home Depot and weekends were spent on the latest project. And they actually had a lot of fun working on the house together. Then they had kids and that's where the home improvement story ends.
We literally haven't done anything to our house since Hannah was about 6 months old. When she was born we were right in the middle of remodeling the hallway bathroom, so we finished that up and that was it. That brings us to present day. The walls we painted have been marked on by toddlers. The wood floors we refinished have giant scratches from pulling a rocking horse across them. And our carpet (not in great shape to begin with) had marker stains, juice spills, dirt, and remnants of silly putty in it.
Now that the kids are older and don't need constant supervision (and I feel like the worst days of damage are behind us), we are ready to get back to some home improvement. First project: get rid of the nasty carpet. And as all home improvement works, one project spiraled into more projects. If we were taking up the carpet, we figured we might as well repaint the walls. And if we are repainting, we should probably fix the cracks in the walls first. And that is how this project spanned months.
These pictures were taken in the fall. We had an indoor jungle gym in front of the windows. I am not kidding. We took it down in preparation for a Christmas tree.
You can see on the walls where Steve fixed the cracks. There were a bunch.
He fixed one on the ceiling which meant the entire ceiling needed to be repainted.
This is why you don't have carpet in your main dining area, folks. It was disgusting!
We had some fun before we ripped it out. :)
We could really see how dirty it was when we removed the trim piece.
The cracks are fixed and the room is repainted! It is hard to tell, but it is now gray instead of cream. I debated forever about going gray. It is the warmest tone gray I could find.
We laid the hardwoods ourselves. It is definitely not perfect. We decided to do floating floor because it was easier, but it means the floor has more give and it's "squishy" in spots. If we had it to do over, we'd probably nail it in. Oh well. It's just a floor. And we'll probably have to redo it in a few years anyway. You know, because we still have children. In fact, about two days after the floor was finished Olive put glue all over a piece of paper, turned it over and stuck it to the floor. "Why?" I asked her. "I didn't want it to move," was the reply. Then we had yet another discussion of appropriate places and materials for art.
This is the final product. Except it's not really "final" because I want a bookshelf in the corner, new art, etc. I think the hardwoods are really pretty with the different wood tones, and it is SO much easier to clean. But I also miss the carpet. It was great for wrestling and horseplay. It served us well when the kids were little. I can't even imagine having babies learning to walk on hardwoods. I was nervous enough watching them fall on their faces on the carpet.
