Extreme Room Makeover

I don't think Tom has ever really liked the blue walls in our living room/dining room (I painted them before I knew him, so he didn't have a say in it!) Then a couple months ago we were at Sandy's house for a playdate and I thought, "her house is so bright and cheery." Our house is bright and cheery, but the dark walls do not contribute to the brightness. :)

I mentioned to Tom that I was thinking about changing the wall color and he was all for it (surprise!) We have also talked about new living room furniture, so it would be the best thing to get the wall color decided before buying the furniture. And we always talk about arranging the furniture differently (who doesn't?) which is so difficult in our small house: the windows and the fireplace can't be moved, so we really can't change where our furniture resides...but we need bookshelves!

So Susan came over to brainstorm furniture layout and she started the idea of putting a bookshelf next to the short wall in our entry. Then I had the idea to completely remove the short wall...and the rest is history.

Removing the short wall means patching the wood floor (which didn't have wood floor under the short wall). And we removed the tile someone had installed on top of the linoleum, which was installed on top of the wood floor, in the entry...what were they thinking? That caused a lot of extra work, but we did it, and...

Today we sanded and stained the floors. Tomorrow we will put the polyurethane finish down, and Rose will continue working on built-in bookcases for us!!!!!! We might even start painting tomorrow. I'll show a before and after shot when we're done, but here are some "in progress" pictures.

Lukas helped Rose remove baseboards. Lukas rode on the floor sander (his weight actually helped the sander be more effective in removing that polyurethane I installed 10 years ago.) Konrad and Natalie slid through the sanding dust and tested their echoes in the empty room. One of us had to babysit Natalie and Konrad at all times (for the next few days, we have a babysitter, which will help a lot!)

Tonight our bedroom is 55 degrees as I type. Tom opened the window in our bedroom to air out the smell of the stain (the kids are in their bedroom, where it doesn't smell and it's much warmer) before deciding it might be better to open the kitchen window for ventilation. Our room WAS 52 degrees, so the fact that it has gone up 3 degrees is encouraging...but we can't turn on the furnace because that will circulate the smelly air through the house. It was May when I did this almost 1o years ago, so open windows weren't such an issue.

But we will survive to finish the project!