Update on the Upstairs

It's hard to believe that we have been in our house for a year now! So much has changed since we first walked through it. We finally finished the work on the upstairs and moved our bedroom up there. We opted to put carpet down on the landing and the stairs instead of trying to refinish everything. I'm glad we did...the carpet we got is so soft!

We went with orange walls on the landing with white trim and black accents. The orange was my idea, but I'll admit that I was a little worried about how it would turn out. It is now my favorite color in the whole house.

We decided to continue the red from the dining room up the stairs since the door to the upstairs stays open all the time. It's all about the flow :)

We painted the bedroom walls gray and bought black furniture from IKEA (of course). We are going to accent with red curtains. I found some beautiful red fabric, I just need to sew it...or bribe Mom into sewing it for me!

And one of my favorite features of the entire upstairs: my new walk-in closet! Joe knocked down the wall between the closet on the landing and the closet in the bedroom and then he and Steve built the shelf and installed the bar and new lights. Now everything has a place...too bad I still can't find anything to wear in the mornings :p

Hardwood Floors

We've been working on the dining room recently. Joe rented a sander and started to refinish the floors. I cam home from work one night to find a dusty mess, but I didn't complain because it meant that I didn't have to help :p

That night, he started with the first coat of varnish. The smell was awful, but it was worth it. I could tell from the first stroke that the floors were going to look 100 times better. It was very exciting.

Once the floors were finished, we finally got to my specialty...the shopping! We found this beautiful new dining room table, that we both love and it is amazing how well it matches the chandelier that came with the house!

Now, the only thing we have left to do is figure out what to do about those horrible curtains. I am no good with window treatments, so I am currently at a loss...

Working on the House

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We started working on the house the weekend the weather warmed up a bit and we have gotten quite a bit done upstairs. We decided that the upstairs is going to be the master bedroom area instead of kid rooms. There is a chance we may not be able to get heat/AC up there without a lot of hassle, so we would rather not have kids running around space heaters and AC units. I still haven't figured out why anyone would want to cover up such beautiful hardwood floors with that ugly yellow shag carpet. I am so glad it's gone!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We decided that, since we were pulling carpet, we would pull it all out. The landing area also had hardwood floors under really ugly carpet, but for some reason only half of it is the hardwood. We'll refinish all of it, but just throw a nice rug over the part that isn't actually hardwood. Joe's desk is going in that corner anyway :)

We also ripped all the carpet off the stairs. They are the same hardwood as the rest of the house. They will be a bit more of a pain to refinish, but it will be worth it!