One Room Down

Our bedroom is the first room in this house that is actually (mostly) complete (I will want to add curtains). This room is so long and skinny, and has been a challenge, but now that we have our things in here it's feeling more like home.

The Jewel of This Home

Remember when we discovered that the dining room had hidden hardwood floors? Well, we finally got the guts to pull up the old floor and see what was there. For some reason they laid plywood down over these floors back in the 70's. I know this because they laid newspaper under the hideous linoleum they laid down. I was a nervous wreck pulling this plywood up. I thought we were going to just create a bigger mess for ourselves. There was hundreds of nails in the floor and they used HUGE nails. It took forever to get this plywood up, but when we did we were very surprised. Under the plywood there was another layer of linoleum that was put in in the 1940's (thank you newspaper), but under that most of the floor was pristine. It hadn't even been stained! So, we rented a drum sander and edger once again. This time it didn't take nearly as long. We just needed to smooth out the floors. My dad is pretty sure these are oak floors. They sanded out well. After much debate and sampling, we decided to stain them a color called Black Cherry. I could not be happier with these floors. They are truly the jewel of this home.

Total Spent 

Sander Rental $50

Sandpaper $20

Stain $15

Polyurethane $38

Misc $10

I Get To Take A SHOWER!

It really is the small things in life that thrill me. We finally have a tub surround in and can finally take a shower! I've been buying store returns from a local auction place, so we got away with this for relatively cheap. I bought the medicine cabinet, surround, blinds and light fixture for just a fraction of the price by going through the auction. I also found this Kohler sink at the ReStore for $45! SCORE! Not counting the plumbing, this room cost us about $300 to complete.

Total Spent

Sink $45

Tub Surround $60

Medicine Cabinet $35

Flooring $10

Wood Blinds $10

Toilet Free

Shower Curtain $4

Light Fixture $12

Calk $20

Paint $28

Misc. $15

(Brand new bathtub was here when we bought the house)

Sanding Hardwood Can't Be That Bad. Can It?

The best part of the house is that there are hidden hardwood floors through out the entire thing. We were thrilled to discover the floors in the dining room. We redid the floors in our bedroom first, and we were not prepared for that at all. They had been painted and we had no idea who long it would take to sand the paint off, even using a 20 grit paper with a drum sander. And those drum sanders? WAY heavier than they look. I give my husband all the credit in the world, because he sanded our those floors for 13 hours before they were done, and then he went and sanded the upstairs floors for another 4 hours. It was not nearly as easy as we thought it would be.

My dad helped stain our bedroom floors, and then my husband was out of town so I had to polyurethane them myself. I literally had no idea what I was doing and spent a few hours on Google. I was sick to my stomach that I was going to mess them up. There floors are from 1890, and I didn't feel like I should be entrusted with their care. But in the end I don't think they turned out half bad.

Especially considering we had no idea what we were doing! I like the nails and the way it took the stain. (This picture really doesn't do it justice.)

The upstairs floors aren't as old the downstairs because this was an addition, but they were filthy. There must have been a big square of carpet in the middle and then it was painted along the edges. It was *quite* lovely. :(

I didn't want to poly this for a few reasons, but long story short I decided to use Danish Oil on this floor. Danish Oil actually was easy to put on, used a small foam roller on a stick, and just rolled it on the entire floor. Let is sit, but on a second coat. Let it soak in, and them wipe off the excess. It was messy because you have to bend over the wet stuff to wipe it up, but I do like the finish of this floor. The best part is that if it get's worn down you just scuff it up with steel wool and apply more Danish Oil. It will blend right in. The bad part is Home Depot really let me down. I had to do Cherry because that's what they had. This 150 square foot floor took way more oil than I thought it would so I ended up buying all they had and then going to Menard's for more. I should have went to Menard's from the start. HD only carries the oil in quarts. Menard's has it in gallons, and they have a much bigger selection of colors. It ended up costing me about $25 more to do the floor because I went to HD and I'm not thrilled with the color. 

In the end, it cost us $250 to refinish both of these rooms, which I still consider steal. 

Total Spent

Sander Rental $85

Sandpaper $50

Stain $7

Polyurethane $38

Danish Oil $50

Misc $20

Pipes? We got 'em.

The plumbing in this house was BAD. There is no basement, so all the pipes go through a crawl space, and we live in a cold climate. To protect the pipes from freezing they had wrapped them in old clothes. It was disgusting. The water was not on when we took possession of the home because the plumbing needed to be replaced. The first plumber that looked at it said that most of it could be saved and estimated a few hundred dollars to repair it so that's what I budgeted on. My husband's friend (thank God for good friends) is a plumber and we asked him to do the work. He came over, took one look at it, and started ripping everything out. Bless his heart, he came over to do a few hour job and was here for two very long days. We replaced everything though, and now have proper shut offs and heat tape to keep everything from freezing. We also used PEX pipe so if it does happen to freeze it won't break. We also had to tear out a wall  because it wasn't wide enough to hide the plumbing. So we had to construct a bathroom wall and drywall it. Goodbe budget. 

Even though we got a huge friend discount, plumbing still made a huge dent in our budget so we're going to have to get a little creative with our budget to make up that difference. 

Good news? We have a bathtub!

Bye Bye Bar

The bar between the kitchen and dining room sticks out like a sore thumb. I can't figure out why it's even there, or why it's shaped like that. I'm convinced that there's a fireplace or something underneath it. No matter what, that thing is going. It's got the old fake brick paneling on it, and a beautiful peel and stick tile countertop. It's a showstopper for sure!

Last night we peaked under the linoleum in the dining room hoping to find hardwood in there too. No such luck. It's just plywood. I was bummed because I was sure there was hardwood and now we're going to have to buy flooring to put in there.

If these walls could talk...

Hubby and I couldn't wait to pull that bar out! It was a nightmare. Whoever built that thing had a passion for nails. I was totally disappointed to find that there was nothing under it except for a chipmunk skeleton and couple of old cans. We did find part of the original wall from 1890. My husband took those out and we are going to repurpose them as picture frames. There was tongue and groove wainscoting on one side of the original wall and I'm going to try repurposing that as shelving. We will have to see how that turns out.

My New Bedroom

The master bedroom is the only room in the house that has a drywall ceiling. I'm not sure why. It has (what else!) paneled walls, but these walls are painted. There is also (what else!) 1970's linoleum on the floor. It's extremely filthy in this room. It's also shaped weird. Eighteen feet long and only 7'10" wide. There's no closet. There are two bedrooms upstairs, but (thank God) the upstairs is all painted off white and it's actually in good shape.

I keep thinking about what we are going to do for flooring in this room. We thought about carpet and maybe laminate. One night, while laying in bed wondering what I was thinking when we decided to do this, it
dawned on me: What's under that linoleum? The house was built in 1890, so chances are there are hardwood floors in there. I couldn't wait to find out so the next day I went there after work. The linoleum was broken I just pulled it up and SCORE! Hardwood floors. I was thrilled. They will need to be sanded down but they have the hand scraped look that is so expensive to get. We also figured out why the room is so long and skinny. You can see on the floor where a wall used to be. This was actually two super small bedrooms and they took the wall out.

Since this is going to be our bedroom we figured we'd just paint over the already painted paneling and call it good. That will save us some money and time not having to buy or hang drywall. We took out the flooring first and it was just tacked down on the edges so it was very quick and easy. The newspapers underneath (which also protected the hardwood) told us this flooring had been there since 1970.

Purple is my favorite color, and when I told my hubby I wanted to paint the room purple he was surprisingly OK with it. (He must love me). Since it was already painted we decided to try and just paint without primer. Prep work took awhile longer than usual because we sanded all the walls with a pole sander and filled in all the screw holes and cracks with caulk. There were a lot. For paint colors we chose BEHR Ash Violet and used BEHR Simplicity for an accent wall. The guy at Home Depot didn't ask which type of BEHR I wanted so I ended up with the paint and primer in one which cost $32 a gallon. I'm SO glad we did. This stuff is amazing. I am in love with this paint and we are going to use it throughout the rest of the house. It covered everything in one coat. I got eggshell finish because I knew it would be more forgiving of flaws and it was. I'm so glad we took the time to prep because it looked so much better with all the cracks and holes filled. A painter once told me never to skimp out on paint. It's a rule we've always followed and it's never done me wrong so far. The few more bucks you pay for paint is well worth it in the long run. Not only is it durable, it looks better and covers better too. We painted the ceiling with BEHR ceiling paint. That took two coats and we sanded in between coats. It turned out very nice as well. The window casings in this room did not match. I suspect when the windows were replaced they put in a smaller one on one wall so both windows were the same size, and then just covered up the gaps that were left with wider window trim. Well, we decided to paint the window and door trim the same color as the walls. I'm glad we did because then the different didn't stand out like it did before.

We still have to sand down and finish the floors and add baseboards (there are none), but I'm really happy how this room turned out.

Total Spent

$20- Ceiling paint
$47- Wall paint
$4- Caulk
$20- Misc. Supplies