Blank Canvas

As I mentioned last week we finished up priming the walls and ceiling of the drywall.

So with the walls looking clean and bright, it was finally time to turn our attention downward... to the floors.

Remember when we got the floors patched and they looked like this?

Well no more! The first step was to sand down the floors about 1/8 inch.  They looked like this.

Bare. Naked. You can still faintly see where the old wood was stitched together with the new wood - and don't worry, there's absolutely no sign of it now that the floors are completely refinished.  Once the floors were ready to accept the stain, we had to pick one! I had picked up a bunch of stain sample colors from Hoosier Hardwoods and narrowed it down to three choices. We wanted to go with something warm and semi-dark.  I nixed anything with too much red in it like any of the mahoganies.  I also nixed any of the walnuts (if you've been reading the blog for a while, you probably remember our history with walnut trees).  The walnut shades just seamed a little too muted, and not warm enough.  So we decided to test Antique Brown, Medium Brown, and Jacobean on our floors to see what they looked like in our home.



















Right away we knew we had to nix the antique brown.  It felt too muddy compared to the other ones.

Then it was a fierce competition between the medium brown and jacobean.  I loved both of them and the medium brown really appealed to us since it was slightly lighter (something my mom was really pushing for since she has lived with hardwood floors for many years and warned us that it would help hide the dust/dirt). 


But in the end, we decided on jacobean.  (Side note: is it Jack-Oh-Bean? or Jay-Co-Be-Ann?  we had a good long discussion. No conclusion made.) It was my favorite and first choice.  And as much as I wanted to choose the practical and safe choice with the lighter, medium brown, my eyes just kept going back to the jacobean.  And, with the support of my husband and mom, they encouraged me to "go with my gut" and forget about practicality.  Besides, what a horrible feeling to walk in and be disappointing with the floor stain color because I settled for my second choice.  Nah, not going to do it.  So, thanks for the support Michael and Mom!

And needless to say, we've never looked back from jacobean.

  It was hard to photograph the floor because of the glare from the windows, so one of my favorite photos is of our closet.  It shows off the warm brown and the black grains beautifully.
 

 We love them!  We couldn't walk on them until Saturday morning.  So Saturday morning I was standing outside the door for a good 10 minutes with my shoes off acting like a frightened skydiver, waiting to take the plunge.  And then I did.  I walked around with a stupid big grin on my face and all I wanted to do was roll around on them and pretend to do snow angles.... Did I say I wanted to do that?  Well I meant I actually did do that!  Surprised?  You shouldn't be.

 Yep! That happened.  And it will probably happen again. 

So with the drywall primed and the floors refinished, I think that officially puts us in the Blank Canvas phase of phase 1.

For 3.5 months we have been tearing our house apart  and trying to get things back together to make this place to resemble something that looks like a house.

Here are some pictures to help you remember the journey we've taken these past months.

From Foyer Looking In:

Livingroom:

 Master Bedroom:

And because our new floors are so beautiful, we decided to cover them all up with cardboard. 

I'm thinking of keeping this look around in the future, who needs area rugs when you've got cardboard!? I'm just keepin' it classy. 

Our kitchen cabinets are being installed this week! Can you believe it? And all of our tile was delivered today for our bathroom.  I'm just a big ball of excitement!