Life on the farm...: Boring Renovation Pictures

Refinished floors in the living room

So when we bought our house it didn't really need any work per say- everything was in acceptable shape just outdated and a little worn down. We knew we'd have to replace carpets for sure and that all the flooring in the house would eventually have to be replaced or refinished. Then there is the matter of repainting and redecorating the rooms more to our personal style, but nothing was urgently in need of repair. So over the last 5 years we have been slowly pecking away at all these cosmetic things. Redoing one of the bedrooms upstairs when Xander was born, redoing a second room for James, redoing our bedroom last year, replacing the front door, fixing the floors/removing the hearth in the den, etc, etc, etc. Then last fall we started to notice some water damage around the front door. It didn't seem like much at first but of course as water damage does it rapidly progressed to several molding and waterlogged floor boards near the front door. As it turns out the floorboards were actually just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out the front steps weren't flashed properly so water has been soaking in to the siding behind them for years and finally is seeping in to the house. Of course the stairs are a giant pile of cement so they will have to be removed with a backhoe and then the siding taken off and then we can get a full look at the water damage behind them... but all this will have to wait until spring and warmer weather (not that this has been a typical winter). In the meantime though it seemed unhealthy to have molding floorboards in our living room but by removing them that meant the whole living room floor needed to be refinished. In addition to that the carpet in the playroom upstairs finally reached the end of it's life cycle (or rather my ability to tolerate it's horrible stench any longer) so we were planning on having the flooring guys here anyway to replace that carpet with some new hardwood. So in the spirit of go big or go home we decided to have the new floor installed upstairs, the living room floor fixed and refinished, and the treads on the stairs and the upstairs hallway floor all done in one big whack. So the boys and I escaped to my mother's and Frank toughed it out at home but 1 week later it is all done! Now comes the job of cleaning up all the sawdust that is clinging everywhere but at least we have shiny new floors to smile down at.