Floored!

This is out of sequent of actual events. However, I wanted to share our living room flooring obstacle and how I came up with an inexpensive temporary solution that we could live with.

When we first looked at our house we noted that the dining room had light wood flooring, the stairs and all of the upstairs had dark wood stain and the living room had carpet. We just aren't fans of carpet, so we both pulled back a corner of the carpet and were relieved to see the same light oak as the dining room.

One morning, shortly after we had moved in, about a year ago, I decided that I would pull up the carpet while the hubs slept. I was positive that I could do it before he even woke up and he wouldn't complain the I had started another project before finishing the other dozen or so.

I was doing just fine until I ran into a... Well it was a... "WhatTheHeck" type of moment.

I just couldn't believe someone would take the time to strip the floors but not continue with a section smack dab in the middle of the living room floor. It looked as if they had pulled the edges of a big rug up and stripped right to that point. Once finished they just plopped that big old rug back down and went about their business.

 

 

I mean, can you believe it? And, wouldn't you know that was precisely when the hubs woke up and came down the stairs. Now, normally he greets me in the morning with a, "Morning, beautiful!" but not that morning it was more like a, "Why? Why?"

He helped me finish removing the carpet and I tried for a couple of months to live with it by layering a couple of rugs over the dark spot. However, it did quite work....

 

As you can see the rugs were just a little shy of the LARGE dark patch. 

I did attempt to fix the problem and by fix I mean do the same thing as they had done... Pull the rug back and sand the floor up to a couple of inches under the rug. I figured that once it was stain the same color as the lighter oak I we could live with it until we could afford new flooring in a couple of years.

 

 

 

Excuse the poor photography I found these pictures on my facebook timeline.

 

In theory, this seemed like an excellent idea but in fact I could never get the stain to match the light colored oak. I must have tried three different stains.

 

So I gave up and just moved onto other project. And, we once again lived with mismatched flooring for a couple more months when an idea struck me.

 

Why not make the dark stain look intentional???



 

 

So with the help of our cat, Squeaker Man, I pulled up the rug.

 

As you can see the borders were haphazard and really needed to be squared up. First I attempted to do math and tried to figure out the size of the square but that just didn't work. Not for me at least.

 

So looked at it from another angle... so to speak. And, with a square and a level I marked out straight lines. I don't seem to have pictures of that step.

 

Hubs and I then went around the border with a sander and squared up where I had placed the pencil marks.

 

 

In the following pictures you can see my pencil marks

 

 

 

I decided that I would like some kind of border so I thought that the best bet would be to leave a section of the border the light color and stain the interior dark. Once I had the painters tape down and the stain completed, I realized that there wouldn't be enough contrast between the original light stain and my fresh sharp edge.

 

 

That is when I came up with the idea of adding a second strip of painters tape on the outside of the new edge and painting the new edge 'BLACK' for a pop.

 

 



 

I let it all dry prior to removing the painters tape. And, the results... I loved it!!! It isn't perfect but it is so much better.

 

 



 

If you look close there are sander marks, but still it looks so much more uniform and that is what I wanted.

 

 

 

And, this is what it looks like today.

 

Like I said, it isn't perfect but it looks so much better and I can live with it for a couple of years until we get the money saved up for new floors.

 

And, here is one more picture... a side-by-side before and after.

 

 



As you can see we have added wainscot and I have painted out all of the trim, including the stair rail. But all of that is for another post. But for now... I love what we have done to make this house our home.

Thank you for stopping by.

Nan



 

The Butler's Pantry

We have a little transitional area between the kitchen and living room. The area I'm referring to is directly in front of that huge wooden cabinet. I'm not sure what this area is called or even if it really needs a name. But, I like to have a name for each room... thus a purpose. I have dubbed this area, "The Butler's Pantry". It's highly doubtful that this house has ever had a butler... but it seems a fitting name for the area.

Picture is from the MLS listing.

As I mentioned, it had a huge unusable cabinet. I could never find anything in it and I began to think of it as a black hole for our pantry/dry goods.

My mission was to find an inexpensive china cabinet that we could repurpose for the little recessed area in our little butler's pantry.

During a return visit to Virginia I made it a point to visit one of my favorite junk/thrift shops. If you are in the Virginia area I highly recommend Class and Trash,

We found a mid century china cabinet that I felt would fit perfectly in the recessed area.

Purchased from Class and Trash for $125.00

I knew we could make this work. It was the right dimension for the recessed area (17" x 41") and I was positive with a little paint and a little spackle editing it would look perfect!

Once back home I removed everything from the huge brown cabinets and we carried them out to the garage. Yep, added storage in the man-cave.

I scrubbed the china cabinet down with warm soapy water and then we removed the top hutch from the bottom cabinet and removed the doors. This project was done pre-blog and I don't have a lot of detailed step-by-step photos.




Primed and installed.

We mounted the upper part of the cabinet 14.5" above the base cabinet. We then added spacers (raw wood along the edge of upper cabinet) and hung beadboard in the newly created area between the bottom and upper cabinet.

 

Prime, spackled and roughed in.

Once we were sure everything shored up, we then made a baseboard for the front of the cabinet... to give it a built-in/always been there look.

 

 

Once the two pieces of the cabinets were secured to the wall and the trim was added it was time to  paint. I used ultra pure white paint in high gloss. I have painted all of the trim in our house with it.

 

This is the view from our stairway. Excuse the mess... just keeping it real. *grin*

As you can see we have plenty of room to store our pantry/dry goods.

Now for the big reveal...

Viewed from the kitchen... still need to paint the walls.

I decided that it worked best for me without the upper cabinet doors. Again... I like to have open shelving to display some pretty dishes.

 



 

Taken from the stairway. Excuse the trashcan and broom handle.

Now for a side by side before and after.... Don't you just love those?

The true before and after. It's a little blurry to see... we added new aged bronze knobs and handles.

 

We built/repurposed the hutch back in the beginning of summer and I still smile when I walk through the area. Best Investment Ever!


Thank you for stopping!

Our 1940 Foursquare

We are slowly making our house a home. I thought I would share the house as we first seen it. These photos are the realtor's MLS photos and show the house as it was when the past owners lived there.

Our house is a cute little 1940 house built in the classic style of a "foursquare." They are very common in this area. It isn't very big and it is what it is, nothing hidden... just a simple basic layout that covers 1,300 square feet. The square footage doesn't include the full basement.

 As you come in from the large front porch you enter directly into the foyer/stairwell/living room.





The fireplace is a working gas fireplace. To the left of the fireplace is the doorway that leads into the walk thru butler's pantry and then into the kitchen.

 



Looking at the living room from the front door. 

It's a small living room that leads into the dining through the arched doorway to the right of the fireplace.

Looking from the far end of the living back toward the front door and staircase.
 

 

 

This is the view from the staircase looking down. I'm not sure why they had so many sofas in the MLS pictures??? When we viewed the house, only the gray sofa, mirror and curtains where in the living room.



To the right of the portable stand/window is the backdoor.

This was the view of the kitchen and as you can see... it is VERY small. It was one of our very first projects we worked on. In another post I'll show how we made it work and flow so much better for us.

The sellers kindly left us this rolling cabinet but it just wasn't our style. And, I thought that so much more could be done to make the kitchen more functional. To the right of the rolling cabinet is the back door that leads out to a little porch and patio area in our backyard.
 


This is the view of ALL of the counter space that was available.

The white door, in the background, is directly across from walk-thru butler's pantry and leads to the side entry off of the driveway.  


View of all the built-in kitchen cabinets.

See that little teeny tiny cabinet to the right of the dishwasher? That was the only drawer in the whole kitchen. No really, the only drawer and it was only 9" wide.
 


Looking back towards the walk-thru butler's pantry.

See the wooden cupboards in the background? That is the walk thru butler's pantry I mentioned. It doesn't look anything like this now. [huge smile]  Again, I'll share in another post.

As I said, these are the MLS photos and they didn't have a lot of views of the kitchen area.

To the left of the refrigerator you can walk through a doorway into the dining room.




Viewed from the arch way in the living room.

The dining room is a very good size and accommodates my family with no problems. As you can see, there is plenty of natural light.

The doorway on the far left side leads into the kitchen. You can get a little glimpse of the back door.



Plenty of sunlight streaming into the dining room.



Looking towards the living room.

That's it for the tour of the first floor of our house. As I said, it's a small house but it really does work perfectly for us. In the next post I will show the upstairs.

Thank you for stopping by!

Nan