Let me just say when we bought this house we knew it was a fixer upper, but being first time home buyers and completely clueless on home improvement we had no clue how much time and effort it took to fix up a house! A month into it and we've only gotten half the stuff done we anticipated, but the hard work is paying off and the house is starting to turn into 'home'. We were scheduled to move in this past week but with the delay on our flooring install and spending every spare moment working on the house, we never found time to pack! We luckily got our lease extended a few weeks on our apartment so we have a bit longer to clean and pack before we move.
Here's a few things we have been working on..
The first is our guest bathroom. This is the one with the amazing snowflake wall paper I posted about last time (which I have yet to do anything with). I love the green tile, but the flooring left much to be desired. When we bought the house it had shag carpeting... umm yeah, carpet in the bathroom is NEVER a good idea! I ripped up the carpet and there was linoleum underneath; this interesting tan color with gold streaks running through it.
I'm not really a fan of brown in bathrooms either; it's not as bad as carpet, but the whole thing still gives me the heebee jeebees. I chose the white and black hexagon tile and decided to lay it myself. After watching a few youtube videos I thought it wouldn't be so hard. Uhhh... let's just say I am definitely not going in the tile laying business anytime soon! It only took me two and a half days, but I finally got it laid and grouted, and have the back pain to prove it. Here's a picture before I did the grout, it's not perfect, but for my first time I think I did a decent job. I'm hoping the bathmat will hide the majority of my mistakes.
We also decided to sand down the wall that had the burlap wallpaper and paint it as an accent wall since we couldn't remove the wallpaper adhesive. I wanted it to be a vibrant 70's orange, but instead it turned out more like a pumpkin. Oh well, we will probably repaint it down the line, but with it being Halloween I think I can deal with it for the time being. We also got our new VCT floors! We decided we couldn't salvage the original tile since too much of it was cracked or broke when we took up the carpet tack strips. I love the new floors so much better anyways! Doesn't it look amazing? I was inspired by the floors featured on the Wedgwood Tulsa blog, but decided to go with green instead since it would match our kitchen counters better than turquoise. Check them out below... also note my amazing shadow hulk arms!
Last but not least, today we got our wood floors installed! We still have to sand and stain them, but the wood is there and it looks amazing thus far. I won't even go into the ordeal we had tearing up the carpet, pulling up the tile underneath and then removing the floorboards. I'll just say wearing painters suits, gloves, googles and face masks in the dead of summer in Texas is not a fun time. But those days are over and now we get to reap the rewards with our amazing new floors!
You also get to catch a glimpse of our new paint colors, we chose a light green for the formal living room and a yellow for the dining. I wanted to keep the original garden mural in the dining room although I wasn't completely in love with it at first. But once I cleaned it up and painted the walls it made a world of difference. Now it fits right in place and I couldn't imagine our dining room without it.
Well that's the latest in my world. Hopefully it won't be as long before my next post, but between moving in next week and a trip to NYC to see "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway for my birthday in 2 weeks, I'm afraid I can't make any promises!
