floors galore

its almost time for the big reveal!

i think i have already mentioned this, but finishing wood floors is awful... first you have to vacuum like 50 times (twice) and then you have to clean them again with a wet rag to get any leftover dust... then its time for stain:

we went with "dark walnut" (obviously)... this is our super organized work station:

welcome to my life... anyway, the staining process happens very quickly so i couldn't take pics during but here is a rundown:
     1. clean floors over and over
     2. smooth on stain evenly (this is super important to ensure even color) with sheep skin pads
     3. let sit 10-15 mins
     4. rub off excess stain evenly (also super important for even color)

and now (drum roll please) behold our new floors!!!!

this was after the first day and they were still super dark (i was secretly kind of freaking out), but about 3 days later the wood had soaked in the stain even more and the grain and character really started to pop:

i can't even tell you how happy i am with it... its beautiful... we sealed them with a satin polyurethane (which bubbled like a big jerk and i had to lightly sand again) and now they are finally finished!!!

makin' friends

i was on my way to my house the other day to meet with some plumbers (epic story for another post), when i had to stop and head-up an emergency evacuation mission... it was very serious... i was just puttering down the road and i started crossing a bridge that goes over highway 75 (the big 8 lane highway that runs through atlanta) when i saw him.... a prefect, tiny, precious turtle scooting as fast as his little legs could carry him to nowhere land in the middle of the bridge... i have no idea how he got there and no idea how he had survived so long doing such ridiculous things... but i was not about to let him get smashed to death on my watch... no siree, operation franklin (his name) extraction was underway.

i had to wait until i got to the end of the bridge before screetching to a halt and leaping out of my car, and then i literally ran all the way across the bridge, snached up franklin, and ran all the way back (got honked at a few times but oh well)...

as you can imagine, he was a little traumatized buy the time we got home... i put him in the yard and after a while he started to come out:

so now we have a new friend in the yard... and now peter knows that when i am supposed to be doing reasonable things i am actually running the streets collecting reptiles and bringing them home.

i'm back, i'm back!!!

hey guys, sorry it has taken so long for me to post!! school has started and i have been doing clinicals at the hospital... i have literally been coming home so tired that my fingers would not press the buttons on my computer (except to type in www.pinterest.com of course)... before i get started here are some of my favorite recent pins:

so many random things, but i love them all... i am seriously considering painting those black and white stripes in the laundry room... tell me what you think...

so, every weekend peter and i have been working nonstop on our house... you would think that we have tons of stuff accomplished, but alas that is not the case... we have only finished one thing in the past 4 weeks, but its a biggie... i bet the suspense is killing you...

first let me remind you of what we started with:

that is what we call a hot mess, but thanks to wonderful friends and family our home no longer looks like a 70's nightmare (you can see the painting and carpet removal posts here)...
the last big obstacle upstairs was the floor... peter and i spent a lot of time and energy arguing about deciding what we were going to do about flooring... the problem is i HATE carpet... hate it, passionately... but wood floors are expensive and we are working on a tight budget here... however, after much price shopping we found some unfinished #2 grade white oak on the cheap (#2 grade means there is about 25% waste mixed in with the good stuff)... we bought enough to do the main areas and the master bedroom (we will put carpet *gag* in the other 2 bedrooms) ...

the walls in our stupid house are not consistently straight so before we could start laying the floor we had to chalk a straight line to work off of...

then we had to face nail the first few rows of wood... "face nailing" is when you nail the wood from the top with a regular nail gun.. this has to be done so that the wood has a good anchor for the floor nail gun to work off of (see peter, i do listen to some of what you tell me)...

this is the floor nail gun, you set it on the lip of the wood and then hit the button on the top of it with a mallet... it then sends a 2 inch staple through the wood at an angle so that it can't be seen from the top of the floor...

one more thing has to happen before you can really get into laying the floor, and it is the worst job EVER... the trim in every single doorway has to be hand-sawed so that the flooring can slide under it...

i am sure you are thinking "chelsea, that's really not so bad" and all i have to say is shut it.... it is that bad... especially when your husband is playing with some awesome power tools 2 feet away from you and you are stuck trying to keep your stupid ikea saw level 3/4 of an inch above the floor.. but after that, we started making some real progress:

but laying floors is not a speedy process... as a matter of fact this is all we did for about 4 weeks straight... but hard work pays off and last weekend we finally finished the laying part:

my favorite part of these floors is the fact that the floor planks are wider than usual and they give the floors a bid of a rugged feel:

love it!! but we still had to sand and stain them... in my lifetime, i have had some difficult experiences, we all have... but nothing compares to sanding and staining all of those hardwood floors... it was HORRIBLE... there are no words...
first we had to clean up a bit:

we also had to check for any nails that might tear up the sander and pull them out... sometimes the wood is so hard that the nails literally cannot go into them and end up twisting into a little knot... i think its pretty cool actually:

then it was time to bust out the big guns:

the super crazy, ruin your hardwoods in a heartbeat, hardcore drum sander... they had more "homeowner friendly" sanders, but we are professionals here... yeah... anyway peter got to work on the first sanding:

between the first and second sanding i went around and filled in all of the nail holes:

then another round of sanding:

unfortunately, the drum sander can't get flush with the wall so while peter sanded i used the hand sander to get all of the edges...

wait a minute.... do you notice anything wrong with this picture? oh yeah, the huge missing rock in our hearth!!! but hold on, it gets better:

oh awesome! our whole hearth is falling apart! how are we going to fix this? no idea. good thing we kept the rock though... *eye roll*

we are now ready for staining, but too keep the suspense going i am going to make you guys wait for the next post... i promise it won't take 3 weeks to post it though!!!