Home ownership comes with a myriad of never-ending projects. As I previously mentioned, we bought our property for the land, not the house. The house is absolutely, mostly functional, and oh so colorful. We’ve already tamed the purple bathroom. This time we started in on the floors. (Excuse the picture quality. Natural light is always best, but this area of the house is pretty limited in that department.)
Except for “wet” rooms, the entire house was carpeted. With very green carpet. That is original to house. And is very worn.
The main concern was the common areas. Between the kids and the dogs, and honestly, my own mucky boots, the floors needed vacuuming every other day, sometimes every day! Who has time for that?!? Not this girl or her amazing husband that vacuums. That was eating up at least 3 hours every week. The front entry was a constant battle and had collected many new stains since we moved in.
(Grasshopper feet there, ready to work!)
The hallway to the bedrooms had its own share of problems, and the carpet was extremely worn out right down the center, creating a dingy brownish look to the carpet.
As you can see we have a lot of books in the family room, so we had to move all of those out to the porch temporarily. The kids wanted me to get rid of CAT’s and my books, but they didn’t complain about moving theirs. Go figure.
The after effect is a mostly smooth concrete floor. We do have little holes along the edges where we pulled the tack strip up that will need to be filled.
A before and after look from the opposite direction in the family room. Also a look at CAT developing a plan and then surveying the completed work.
Sophie is demonstrating the heightened appreciation for puppy beds around here, especially during the unusually cool weather we have had to date.
Our plan is to eventually put in solid wood floors throughout, though we might rethink that given our affinity for large breed dogs that are inside pets. However, that’s a step for 3 or 5 years from now. We have a few walls to rip out and a kitchen to relocate or at least plan before we can purchase that flooring all at one time.
Meanwhile, we are going down to sub-floor level. At least in the rooms with concrete. The plan is to stain the concrete. By that, I mean that we are going to hire a contractor to come in do all of that work.That comes after the wall behind the big couch comes out in the next 8 to 12 months.
We are still on hold with two other rooms because they are on a wood sub-floor over the basement until we come up with a plan we can execute quickly. One of those is my “office” (aka, the formal living room), the other is the formal dining that is slated to become an enclosed office during remodel.
The next undertaking will be the green kitchen and breakfast room walls. While we are considering a (very) washed down version of this color for the exterior of the house, we would prefer a more neutral tone for inside. My hope is that it will make the room seem less dark and more open until we can do the remodel.
Happy Summer!
~Mouse
Urban Mouse, Rural House 