Our Snowball of a Project

Back in September we finally decided to bite the bullet and get our floors refinished (professionally - not DIY). We have a lot of hardwood in our house so it was basically like moving but only for four days.

Everything had to be moved out of the rooms, even the clothes in the closets - in our case that meant all three bedrooms, our hallway linen closet and the living room. Yes, 3 beds, a crib, two couches, a television, the list goes on and on.

A before look of the floors in Nora and Myles' bedroom.

 And naturally when we start one project it snowballs into other projects as well.  It only made sense to freshen up the paint on the walls in our living room.  It was time for a change anyway. We went with Wythe Blue by Benjamin Moore.  We also figured we would take off the baseboards and replace them ourselves as well.  

Before in the living room.

This is the view from the doorway of our basement. The only room that
remained on the floor was for the door to swing open.  The couches and
kitchen table were in the garage.  Our mattress was standing on end in the bathroom!

Then we were both starting at our dated fireplace and figured now would be the perfect time to rip up the tiles on the floor in front of the fireplace and get rid of that lovely blue faux marble we have.  Maybe even get a new cover for the fireplace to modernize the gold.

So off everything came! 

After Dan got most of the tile off and the mantle safely down
the kids moved in to help with their worker gloves (garden gloves).

Our living room before.

A view of some of the most worn areas on the floor.

After a visit to the fireplace store, we got a quote for a new cover for the fireplace.  Because it's an old model they only have one choice... for $700! No thanks! I was actually recommended by the employee to skip that (like it was even a question) and use the Rust-oleum heat resistant spray paint to give it an update. Sold.

And naturally, redoing the fireplace leads into yet another idea.  Dan gets a major itch to buy a giant tv and mount it above the fireplace.  I'm all for it because who doesn't want a bigger tv and getting rid of the tv stand to the right of the fireplace makes the room feel much larger. 

This is how the fireplace was for a long while until
Dan had enough time to fill the hole.  It's where the
blue tile was which we decided we didn't need at all.

Once everything was said and done -- here are the final products! 

The old mantle with a new shade of paint and shorter legs
along with new 5.5" baseboards painted the same color
as the mantle with a 55" television mounted above.  

And look at those floors!
No stain just a clear coat of polyurethane.
It really lightens the room up. 

This is the area where the really worn spots were.  It looks
absolutely amazing. 

One last thing - I took this chance to redo my gallery wall too.  I was looking at it one day and finally realized the reason I didn't love it before was because I had too small of frames for the space. I bought a few new frames, the key and the clock then chose some of my favorite pictures of the kids to display and viola!

Plus Dan rearranged the furniture just a tad and it really opens things up.

We literally just finished painting the baseboards and doing some touch ups on the fireplace on Valentine's Day.  So while this snowball of a project took five months - almost to the day - to complete we are extremely happy with the results.  I have never loved our living room more!