When Chris and I got home from our honeymoon in the middle of October last year, we (I) had the “brilliant” idea to re-do a room in our house entirely ourselves. Like, we’re talking floor to ceiling and everything in between. That may not be a big deal for some people, but for us it was quite the adventure.
Ever since I bought our current home about four years ago, I have despised the room at the front of our house. It was originally a makeshift office/room for the cats, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Over time it just became gross to me, with old carpet and an odd smell. I was over it and sick of having a whole room in our house that I didn’t even want to go in. So we demolished it.
First, we painted the majority of the walls, except for the trim/baseboards around the bottom. We chose a soft grey color, which has always been one of my favorites and a bright white for the trim. Although I don’t have the most patience, I am a decent painter as long as Chris does all the taping around the edges and the window. The painting portion itself took us infinitely longer than we thought it would, but that wasn’t too big of a deal to us. The bigger deal to me was that we had all of the stuff that had been in that room scattered around the hallways, and it was driving me nuts.
Next, we ripped up that gross carpeting. That part was actually really fun. I also (weirdly) really enjoyed using some little tool to take all the nails out of the boards that were holding the carpet in place. Chris thought I was crazy, but I thought it was a blast. He had to take all the staples out which was much more tedious than my job – probably why I enjoyed that part more than he did 😉
After that it was time to paint the baseboards and all the trim around the windows, which was no big deal. But then it came time to lay down the new flooring. Oh man. You guys. If you do that for a living, I am so impressed by you. It is so tough to do that perfectly. Before the actual flooring we had to lay down this foam stuff, which to this day I have no clue why. Then board by board, we knocked the laminate flooring into place. The hardest parts were around the closet and where the amount of boards didn’t match up with the width of the room so Chris had to saw those down to fit just right. I didn’t do any of that work and am so lucky that he turned out to be really good at it – it just took a long time.
By no means did we line everything up perfectly, but it was certainly good enough for both of us and once it was all done, we were pretty darn proud of what we had done. I still want to repaint the whole ceiling, since it looks splotchy to me, but that can be done in time.
Once I did a good clean of the new floors and did some minor paint touch-ups of parts of the wall we had scratched, we were ready to start moving furniture in – thank goodness. I was so ready to have my hallways back at that point. We had an extra bed in the basement, so I painted the frame white to match the trim and we moved that into the room. We also purchased a simple white bookshelf from Ikea that we placed in the corner of the room and a small wooden TV stand that I painted a dark grey. We hung up some pictures on the walls, I put a bunch of random little cute decorations in there, and hung up a large mirror that I had stored in the basement and loved but had nothing to do with until now. Target provided us with a faded white/grey curtain set and a white/grey area rug that both look so pretty with how we arranged the rest of the room. Honestly, I like this room better than our bedroom now! Maybe if we decide to stay in this house for a while longer we will get around to re-doing ours soon, too….
This picture was obviously taken before we hung up all the art and before some final touches, but it’s pretty close to the finished product!
I must say though, we are so happy with how everything turned out. It made it even better that we had two guests come and stay in it less than a week after we finished. My sister Olivia stayed with us for a night, and then my grandma stayed with us for a few days over Christmas. I had never really “hosted” people in my home before – it was always like, “Sure, you can crash on the couch if you want to.” I loved being able to provide them with a comfortable, secluded place to stay, and I can’t wait until we have more guests come to stay!
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On a completely different note, how is your week going? I am just not feeling like myself lately, so I’ve been spending a lot of time at home on the couch with my latest obsession – Grey’s Anatomy. You guys, I am going to basically be a surgeon by the time I am done with all 14 seasons of this show. I swear I’m not crazy, but I find myself offering suggestions to the characters on the TV about their patients, like I have any clue what I’m talking about. I’m hooked.
We really don’t have too much planned for the rest of the week, except for dinner with my parents on Friday night and an appointment to look at purchasing a new car for me this weekend! I like what I’m driving now, but I am definitely ready for a change.
Have a great Wednesday!
Have you ever remodeled or redone something in your house? How did it go? Would you do it again?
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