Hardwoods and Hard Work

Like I told you in this post, we planned to rip up the carpet in the nursery and paint the floors white. Well last week, as Matt and I were standing in the room mapping out some other to-do's, I plainly asked him if he truly had the energy and time to redo the floors (in addition to the fact that he had put up new crown molding and planned to replace the door and window frames and baseboards. Oh and did I tell you he insulated the entire underneath of our house? Yep, he works his butt off!) So we talked it over and decided we could live with the carpet - it was just too much work.

We ate our words.

Last Sunday, we skipped church and Matt got started on the frames and baseboards. We moved most of the smaller items into the office and pushed the crib, dresser and bookcase to the center of the room and Matt got to work (I did work too, I ironed, but honestly I can't really help with that sort of stuff - I don't know how!) About 30 minutes later, Matt called me into the room and said, "Ok, want to take a look?" and held up a corner of the carpet. Of course I said yes and the next thing we know we are finding almost perfect hardwood floors underneath! Despite the carpet tacks, staples and a few gashes in the floor, the boards were in great condition and level! Who knew?!?! And who decides to cover up nice wood floors with carpet?!?! Ridiculous!

Here are some photos:

About 1/2 way through pulling up the tacks.

The floors had that spray spackle on them to adhere the carpet and pad to the floor and after much scraping, pulling up tacks, staples and sweeping/vacuuming, we realized that we were going to have to paint the floors. I love a good stained floor, but Matt promised it will be cheaper and easier to paint them with oil based floor paint. I've actually seen this look in some design magazines and loved it (although some of my friends I told about it gasped at the thought - again we are in the "We paint wood" camp. To each their own right?)

So last week Matt sanded the floors, and finished one last project before we painted - widening the closet opening. For some reason the opening was about 1/2 the width of the closet - impossible to get to one corner of it and it makes for wasted space.

Here is the closet after it was cut open:

Matt is building shelves for the closet too, and created a nice base! It will be painted white along with the baseboards.

Here are the floors sanded part of the way - can you see the difference?

And here are the fully sanded floors.
I don't know if you can tell, but the first shot is before I cleaned the floors and the second one is after. ;)

After he finished sanding, he then installed the new door frames for the door and the baseboards. And he caulked all the new moldings too. My man is a work-a-holic!

So Friday night, after I worked at a charity event for my friend Tia (check out the article in the paper here and their website here), I prepped the floors for painting. First I sprayed some of our corn based organic cleaner on the floor and took my handy Swiffer sweeper, covered it in a old rag and soaked up as much of the wood dust as possible - it took 7 rags to get most of it up!! I let it dry and then on Saturday night (again after another day at the charity event - it was awesome by the way), I mopped the floor with some warm soapy water and dried it with a big beach towel. (You don't want to paint with that much dirt/dust on the floor as it will make for a bumpy floor!)

And today I painted the floor. Matt found this amazing LATEX floor paint that is usable for both indoors and out, and got it in a dark charcoal color - we decided white would be too hard to keep clean. We were so excited to not have to use oil based paint - the smell is so intense, you have to use mineral spirits to clean up AND it takes a long time to dry. The latex floor paint we bought only takes 4 hours to fully dry and you can start to walk on the surface after 6 hours!!

So this morning I made a pot of coffee, cranked up the Christmas music on Pandora and got to work. First, I painted around the edges of the room.


That's a space heater in there, helping keep me toasty and drying the paint too!

Then I rolled the rest of the floor, backing myself out of the room. To avoid streaks, I did the "W" method - you make a W with the roller when you paint to avoid streaks and excess bubbling up.

And here is the finished product:

EEKKK! I love it!

Also with the combination of Christmas music and painting the nursery, I found myself teary eyed a couple of times. I started thinking about the labor of love Matt and I have put into Baby M's room and just got totally weepy. I hope our kiddo enjoys their room - I know I have loved every second of making it special and unique for him/her.

So tomorrow, Matt will paint the baseboards and shoe-molding, install the shoe-molding and we'll move the major pieces of furniture back into the room - right now they're piled in the office.

Here is what our office/guest room looks like with the dresser, bookcase, crib and all that baby stuff in there. We look like hoarders don't we? See if you can spot the cat ;)

And then we'll finish painting the crown molding and door/window frames. We didn't plan on totally redoing this room, but here we are with new floors, moldings, door and window frames, a new closet, new window coverings, new furnishings and all done by us for very little money. It pays to have a handy husband who does this stuff for a living!