The photo above is what our home looked like when we got possession, one week and a day ago. As you might already know, we took an entire week before moving in so that we could do a little work. The floors needed refinishing, and I knew I'd want to paint those beams, so we got to it right away.

Justin's parents came to help with the floors, my parents came to paint. It was a hard week. Not just because of all the labor and time constraints, we experienced two unexpected setbacks with the sanding, but also just having three little ones to entertain while all this was going on. We are both exhausted and sore. We are also so proud of what we accomplished. So here we finally are, I'll show you what went down and how it turned out...

Justin's mom started right away by tearing out the carpet in our master bedroom. It was over twenty years old. It was nasty. It had to go, and there was precious original hardwood under there.

Meanwhile, we cleaned out the fireplace, and got out our paintbrushes.

Justin Sander did most of the sanding. It was dirty work. Seriously, I would never recommend anyone do this while living in the home. Between the dust and the fumes, you'd die. Or at least you'd be very uncomfortable.
But the hard work is, oh, SO rewarding. There was some awkwardness in acquiring a home that had been lived in by the same occupant for the last eighteen years. I can't wait to get some paint on some of these walls.

The thing about floors: it's the one part of your home that you're always in contact with. When they feel dirty and gross, your whole home and body does. So seeing our floors nicely stripped, sanded, and smoothed was a beautiful sight indeed.

They looked brand new. I almost wanted to leave them that way. Almost.

Refinishing floors is tedious work. You can't just sand and stain, in between you have to "tack". I still don't know what this step was exactly. Justin the Sander simply told me we had to do it.

Justin and Paxton finished the buffing together. They are thinking of starting a business, Sander & Son Sanding. {For as many "sanding Sander" jokes I made last week, my husband and his parents laughed at 0% of them.} {Also, people always try and tack an "s" onto the end of our name, so it's "Sanders", and this upsets me more than anyone else in Justin's family.}
Justin and I are true soul mates. We made the decision on stain quite easily. We never disagree about such choices. We both wanted a dark stain, like espresso. We chose Royal Mahogany by Dura Seal.
Actually--true story--we both considered a gray stain first. We loved the idea. Then we got caught up watching all those Rehab Addict shows, and the star of that show remodels and flips historic houses, restoring them to their original beauty. She is amazing. She says never to renovate to trends, always go with timeless looks that fit the era of your home. So, then we agreed: a dark stain was our favorite. It was an easy choice for both of us, we never looked back. {Plus, gray walls AND floors? That's a little depressing, dontcha think?}

A lot of people stress about paint, stain, and finish choices. I've always found such decisions to be extremely easy. I pick colors and finishes in a snap. In the hardware store, millions of paint chips don't intimidate me. I can easily locate the exact color I want just by glancing them over.

I knew I wanted darker gray walls, in part because I have so much colorful furniture and a green couch, we needed something more neutral--but I don't like browns and beige. I knew I wanted to white wash that fireplace, and all the trim. I knew I wanted the walls to be satin finish--I almost always chose satin--and the white paint to be semi-gloss. I knew I wanted the floor varnish to also be semi-gloss. Early on in this process, when our home was still under contract, I went Googling for "white beams gray walls dark floors". This is what I found, and it was exactly what I was going for.


So...!




This is our living room, as of this morning.

And the adjoining dining room too.

This is what the dark floors look like, from the corner of the master bedroom. {That's looking across the hall into the girls' room.}

The freshly painted white fireplace.

The only thing unfinished is the baseboard. We'll get to that soon enough...

To say it simply: it's exactly what I had in mind. Exactly.

This is Paxton's room. It's funny how I usually avoid dark colors, but for some reason, I was really drawn to the idea of a dark mahogany floor. I love it. I think it's elegant and sophisticated.
Peekaboo! Hall closet.
The view from the entryway. I love the semi-gloss. I read all over that satin finish is the big trend with floors right now, but I'm so glad we chose semi-gloss.
The dining room windows are nice and bright. This is a HUGE change from our north-facing, dinky, dark rental.

Oh then there's THIS. I love/hate it. I really do love it. A built-in plant wall/book shelf/cabinet system. Of course, I painted it white. It was lots of work taking all that hardware off to paint the doors, but I loved the original hardware. I think it has a real cottage charm, which fits the house façade. Can't wait to get a quarter round trim on the base there.

Here are a few fun before & afters for you:
We left the house at 12:15 a.m. last night. We'd been there late, putting finishing touches--panels and such--in place. This afternoon, we started loading the truck up, and now this house is full of our furniture. {We were SO blessed to be able to use the truck with a lift gate from Justin's work.} It makes it feel even more like ours to see our things inside. I'm sure more photo posts will follow as we get settled in.

We. Are. SO. Ex.Haus.Ted.

Was it worth it? Yes. Would we do it again later in life? NO.

Okay, maybe.

Cheers,
Heather