Complete...
Almost

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home reno

Home Reno

Plant Selections
Maiden Grass
Spirea, Little Princess Pink
Spirea, Goldmound Pink
Rose,Livin' Easy
Dogwood, Ivory Halo​

Home
​Reno

before and after

As we continue work on the basement...an update on the upstairs!

With in the first few hours of closing on our house we removed all the carpet in the upstairs to expose the original wood floors. From there is was just a simple 6 months of floor refinishing and a fresh coat of paint! ;-) 

Below: Floors are finished and walls are painted. 

We had a hard time deciding on a light, so we photoshoped in our favorites to make the final decision. 

The final product! 

Floors: Sanded and stained by Jeff
Trim: New baseboards installed by Jeff
Mirrors: purchased at Walmart, custom frames made by Jeff
Lighting: Quoizel, purchased from FUSION Light and Design
Nightstand: The Arch, $10 each!
Pillows: Target
Bedding: Ikea
Vases: Wedding present
Doors: Original, painted black

Three years in the making... and we have sod! ​

Since refinishing the floors was the priority project the front yard took a back seat till summer of 2014. We (Jeff) removed the willows trees, shrubs and cleaned up the front yard. New edging and mulch started to bring some color back to the front. Spring 2016, irrigation and sod!  

Next up plants, trim, and some help for those entry stairs!!

Image gallery of progress yard work...

Before & After

Before & After

One of the biggest hidden tasks we are taking on in our home, is to refurbish the doors. All the doors on the top floor match and for the most part were in great shape. We have 6 doors total (not including the front door) that we are planning to refurbish. 2 down, 4 to go!  

We have doors that are both stained with a clear glossy sealer (above left) and painted (above right). We started with Ready Strip, an all purpose stripper that you can buy at any hardware store. It worked great on the first round so we have stuck with it. 

We removed the doors from inside, took off all the hardware and followed the general directions of the Ready Strip. We applied the stripper at first with a thin coat, but found that a heavier coat (especially on the painted doors) was easier to remove. Once the stripper is applied and sits for a few hours (above left) you can come in with a putty knife to remove the sealer and paint (above right). The stained doors only took one coat to remove the glossy sealer, but because there were a number of the different painted layers, the painted doors took about 4 applications. 

Once the sealer was removed, we sanded the doors down to clean up an nicks and scratches (above). Any major nicks were filled with wood filler and sanded down. We started with 60 grit sand paper to remove the remaining stain, then 100, and 220 for a final smooth finish. (120 would work as well). 

Tips:
1. This was more time consuming then I thought it would be. I was planning to remove one door, have it finished and back up the same day. While this can definitely be done, because the stripper needs to sit for a few hours and the painted doors need a few applications, one door took a few days. 
2. If the stripper is applied and is left for more then about 12 hours, it tends to dry out. This isn't a big deal, all you need to do is wet the door down with a spray bottle of water. 
2.  Once most of the stripper is removed we went back in with a wet cloth to remove as much of the access film as we could. A bristle brush is also useful to help remove the stripper from the corners.
3. I started to sand relatively quickly after removing the stripper and found it quickly gummed up the sander. Instead I let the door dry overnight and sanding was much easier. 
4. If any of your doors need additional wood filler, plan for them to sit overnight once again. Leaving time for the wood filler to dry before sanding. 

Some may ask why strip the paint and stain from the doors at all. While this was more time consuming then I thought it would be, it was worth removing the clear sealer because the final paint would not have adhered as nicely or at all to the glossy finish. Because painted doors take paint differently then an exposed wood, to make sure all the doors stayed cohesive, we had to strip the painted doors as well. 

All in all we are extremely happily with the final door, which you can see below!

What we thought would be a 2 week project (silly first time home renovators :-) turned into a 6 month adventure. Last we posted our floors were covered in tar. We had two options, spend the time to remove the tar or spend money on sand paper. 

We decided to save money and attempt to remove the top layer of tar by hand scraping with a heat gun. As you can imagine this was taking FOR EV ER and our patience was running thin. After a few nights hand scraping and feeling like we weren't getting anywhere, we decided to try sanding. 

So Jeff started sanding... sanded some more... and sanded some more...

Even though it took a number of passes, the tar came up relatively easily. Jeff will probably tell you it felt like years but it wasn't long till the first floor was done and ready for stain.

TIP:
When it came to choosing a stain we made sample after sample. (Even though we thought we liked a color it would test different almost every time). We tested a number of stains at different lengths of time. Most apparent on the above sample (fifth from the left) you can see that how long you let the stain set before wiping it down can dramatically change the outcome. This is the same stain but we let the lower half sit a few minutes while the top half only set for about 30 secs. 

We decided on Minwax Classic Grey Wood Finish from Home Depot and quickly
realized that even after testing the stain, it was to brown. (stain closest to the window in the image below). So we tested our second favorite Sherwin-Williams Wood Classics - Rustic Grey. (Second from the left in the image above and the stain closet in the image below).

We liked this stain much better and once Jeff re sanded the stain we didn't like it was time to officially start staining!

Staining was much faster then sanding. Jeff applied the stain with a cloth by hand and I would follow a few seconds later to wipe up any extra. We then applied two layers of clear semi gloss sealer. After 6 months of tar, sanding and staining the results are shown below!!

Even though it took much much longer and it was a challenge to finish our floors, overall we are happy with the out come and that we decided to do them ourselves! Nothing like learning first hand :-D

Next Up... Baseboards and Concept Sketches for the first floor!!