The Living room

Meet Living room

The first time I saw this room, I liked it. I liked the size (12x16 - larger than that of any comparably-priced home we'd seen). I liked the wide stairway that led upstairs, knowing we'd later open the wall. I liked the extra-tall baseboard moulding that matched the size of the radiators (look closely, they blend into one another).

I really, really liked the fact that this home had hardwood oak flooring under all of the carpets. And despite my chipper outlook on all-things-home, I hated the carpet so much that we wasted no time ripping it up.

When I say we wasted no time, I mean we ripped it up the night of our closing, even though the house didn't have the electricity on yet. We have headlamps ready for such projects.

It looked pretty bad in there. We knew right away that it probably couldnt be completely repaired with a few sandings. The former owners had pets, and well, those stains don't come out. (The good news is that all other rooms looked great and polished up perfectly in the refinishing.)

So, fast-forward through the refinishing. Floors turned out better than expected, but we have plans to completely replace them one day. Even so, we covered them with painter's paper to repaint the room. No sense completely degrading these poor old planks.

This is a shot of the room after everything, from ceiling to baseboards, was primed (well, except for the radiator covers. I enlisted my mom to help with that).

And we'll end with a shot from the holidays, when we were in the throws of a carpet crisis- hence the bare floor. You can't even see much of the floor damage in this shot. Bingo.

Shoutout to Wade in the bottom left corner!