Living Room Remodel

Yeah, so we decided to totally remodel our main floor. So far - one year later - we have one of the room done... okay, almost done. But I think it is close enough to finally talk about it on here.

So, this was our front room when we bought our house.

These are actually the realtor pics from Zillow with the previous owner's furniture. 

There was no way to put furniture in this room. The stairs totally blocked the doorway, and there wasn't enough additional room to have a walkway to the rest of the house. We basically used it for our computer cabinet and piano. I hated it. Oh, and the turned spindles and railing made me want to throw up in my throat.

So, we moved the stairs. Yeah, so December 14, 2015 we - and by "we" I mean Ryan - tore out the coat closet behind the front door, rebuilt the subfloor, moved four stairs to straighten the run and built a new landing. This process took about a month.

Removing the coat closet

The hated spindles and newel posts

All gone coat closet, spindles and posts! 

Goodbye stairs blocking the doorway

This hole was created on a Thursday evening of labor. Ryan handed the kids to me up on that first start, over top of the hole for bedtime that night, and Ryan had to take off Friday from work. It was crazy.  

Those are the basement stairs. It was a big drop. 

But that Friday, he got the new landing built and straightened the old stairs over the hole. Phew.

So at this point we had totally trashed some sections of drywall, as you can see in the pictures. All our drywall is textured, so we were going to have to hire someone to come in to texture the new wall. So the Pinterest junky in our relationship - no names needed - decided it would look really nice if instead of re-doing the drywall, we just covered it with board and batten.

Sooooo much easier said than done. This process filled our nights and weekends until Spring/Summer, when we had to pause everything.

First, Ryan attached this smooth board to cover the textured walls. We wanted to just glue it, but that didn't work, so it had to be cut and tacked up. Then we had to place all the boards.

We laughed that the neighbors probably all thought we were turning our front room into a cardboard box. 

Since I hated our original newel posts and spindles, Ryan built a case around our original posts and made them more sleek, and we eventually got all new spindles. 

This picture shows the boards Ryan but up to create the pattern.

All summer long we worked on the regular lawn/yard upkeep. (We also spent all our time and money on our patio roof, which I know I mentioned TWO YEARS ago in a birthday post, but... That story is for another LONG remodel story. We also built a playhouse, complete with two slides and a climbing wall, and added a sandbox underneath, so we stayed busy, and this project sat on hold.)

In October, with the yard work wrapped up for the winter, we got back into the mess we were calling our house. We finally got a reasonably-priced quote on spraying all our wainscoting white. They fit us into their schedule one week at the beginning of November, and that's when we really started getting excited. We never hire out anything, so it was exciting to see how quickly they got it all turned into beautiful. smooth white.

Then the week before Thanksgiving we ripped out all the carpeting in the front room, and Thanksgiving weekend we - and by we I actually mean Ryan, Collin and I - laid that room's hardwood flooring.

The following weekend Ryan put in the new railing and spindles (yes, we'd gone almost a year without a safe staircase with four kids under the age of 7 and a clumsy mother).

With the front room nearly finished after Thanksgiving, we changed gears to the rest of the main floor. We had bought enough hardwood flooring to do the kitchen and family room too, so every Saturday in December was dedicated to flooring removal in the additional 2/3 of our main floor. One evening we took out the carpet and staples in the family room. That was pretty easy.

The main reason we redid this back room's flooring was because of this awkward transition between the mud room and the kitchen. I hated this little landing thing. 

Two LONG, HARD Saturdays were spent removing the linoleum from the eating area of the kitchen and then the prep area of the kitchen.

Since we were ripping it out anyway, Ryan grabbed some Sharpies at the store, and we let the kids go to town on the linoleum. I thought we should win the coolest parents award.  

They thought that it was pretty cool. 

It was brutal work. Lots of splinters and bloody knuckles. Super sore backs. So much dust and an infinite number of staples, seriously. We removed linoleum on Saturdays, and we pulled and/or cut staples for the week nights in between. It was literally back-breaking labor. I've never been so tired or slept so soundly.

And that brings us to our Christmas week. After a month of staples, splinters and bare chipboard for flooring, we started laying the new hardwood in the kitchen and family room the day after Christmas. It took us three, long hard days. I learned to measure, cut, nail and hammer boards. Ryan was better at it than me, but I knew how to do it all by the end. Talk about a sore back. I've never slept better.

It is beautiful, and we are super happy, but there's a reason that the labor to install hardwood doubles the cost of the product. It is truly labor.

Ironically, the very next day after we finished our installation we had planned to just work half-days (baseboard and toekick replacement and other finishing touches) and then enjoy some time with the kids (trampoline park, indoor pool, arcade, etc.) But, instead we got SLAMMED with sickness. Collin got an ear infection, Ryan got respiratory influenza, Ethan got pink eye (that he passed to me, Kate and Ryan in turn), and the rest of us got snotty, coughing colds. It has been a miserable last two weeks. We think we are on the home stretch now, but... I'm kinda waiting for the next victim.

Somewhere in our dazed illnesses, we got a babysitter and went shopping. We had a lot to do: we ordered new carpet for the stairs and upstairs hallway (they've been bare plywood for months and months), we bought a couch and accent chairs for the living room, and we bought rugs for the living room and family room. It was an expensive... and a totally essential, shopping day.

So, are you ready for the grand finale? Here's our new and improved front room.

This post is mostly dedicated to this front room, but since we did the flooring everywhere else too that story sneaked in. We still want/need to re-do the kitchen (planking on the island, back splash and counter tops) and the family room (accent wall and fireplace redo), so I didn't take "after" pictures of anywhere else, but at least the floor is done in those rooms already.

And that's our one-year story. I think we've earned a break. Do you agree? ;-)