p.s. On the floor finish

The dude came back today with Nelson (the guy who actually does the work) and when I showed him the floors in the office he said he's pretty sure they are a water-based finish and the rest of the floors will be very similar to them. So all that fretting for nothing!

Floors and mirrors oh my!

So not a lot to say ... not a ton of progress ... except that the mirror is now removed from the wall (much more quickly than anticipated) and the floors in the midst of being refinished. The date was pushed back a bit but they came today and fixed all the parts that needed to be fixed, ripped up the carpet from the guest room and installed all of the flush-mount registers. The house smells like freshly cut wood - yum.

Paisley has been shipped off to Grandma & Grandpa's for the week (until Thanksgiving really) so I'm a little lonely and missing my dogger friend. But the idea of trying to keep a dog (and her fur) off of freshly finished floors wasn't too appealing and my parents were generous enough to take her on for a while.

We'll see about this blog. So far, my track record hasn't been great. I'm hoping as I dive into more DIY projects, I'll have more to share. If not, bye bye blog.

The Floor Dilemma

So last week I called the floor place, and we set a date of November 13 to begin work on the floors. The one outstanding thing was that I needed to go to the showroom to choose the finish. I thought I *had* chosen the finish - the guy who came to do the quote seemed to know exactly what he would do (one of the bedrooms had already been refinished, so I told him to match it). I think I figured they'd have that in their notes, I'd go, see a sample that looks exactly like the room in my house and we'd be good to go. Uh, no.

Instead, I was presented with 4 samples, none of which looked like what I was picturing in my mind as a match to the room. I had even taken a photo of the floors:



But it didn't really help.

So I decided to go with what I thought would look best. A clear water-based finish.

But then I fretted all the way back to the office ... what if the transition between the existing room and the hallway looked weird? What if the one I chose was too light? What if what if what if? I'm already overwhelmed by having to make so many decisions and the sky's the limit. I work so much better with constraints.

I didn't take a pic of the exact sample, but in my mind's eye, it looks something like this:



After talking to several people, everyone agrees that the lighter color will look nice with the color scheme I've been noodling on (chocolate brown, a greenish bluish color, cream, and beige) and that if all else fails, I can always get the office re-done when the carpet upstairs goes (the dog hair clumps in the off white carpet are already driving me nuts).

So I guess the dilemma has been solved. But I think I'm going to run back out there just to look at the sample one more time! It's gonna be a long process ...

Moving in

I moved in September 29 and sometimes it feels like I blinked and it's the 1st of November, and sometimes (like last weekend pulling shrubs; more on that later) it feels like I've lived here forever.

One of my first thoughts upon moving in was that I had many more projects than I anticipated. It's not that I began thinking of new things that needed to be done; it was more like I kept talking about the "potential" this place had without considering what it would take for it to live up to it's "potential."

But I'm happy to be here and it gets better (and simultaneously worse) all the time. As my father so adeptly put it, "Honey, your lifestyle is about to change." And he was right.

The first weekend after moving in was a whirlwind of putting the kitchen together. The next weekend I was down for the count with food poisoning. Last weekend, Dad and I pulled out the shrubs. And this weekend was spent running errands, doing laundry, half getting the office put back together, cleaning out the garage, pruning the raspberries, laying mulch on the mudhole left by the bushes, and installing hooks for various shovels and rakes. I think I did more but can't remember.

I'm starting this blog to keep track of the progress in words and pictures. I hope it will be fun for me to keep a record of my work as I begin to tackle these jobs. I have made a personal commitment to keeping at this (both the blog and the house), and to try things I maybe didn't think I could do before. A nice man at Lowe's told me yesterday, "You can do this yourself, you know." And I was inspired.

I can. I can do this myself, you know.