Select, Align, Nail... Repeat

I honestly don't even know where to begin blogging about this weekend. It was craziness, some self-inflicted, but mainly because we spent over 20 hours installing the wood floors. One of the worst decisions we have ever made was spending a very late night out Friday night. When my parents arrived Saturday morning, we had slept three hours and were not in a good place.

Time to rally and put in some floors

My parents were not pleased but we pulled it together quickly and started laying the floor by 9:00am. We decided to begin with the corner of the room by the front door. This part actually took much longer than expected since it is important to ensure the floor is square.

Let the fun begin

The cutest Kurty Bird

We were super impressed by my friend Tara, who was able to sleep through over two hours of hammering and nailing.

We envied Tara..

We made a great team - I selected the wood, my mom hammered the pieces into place, Andrew worked the nail gun, and my dad did all the cutting and tricky parts. We thought the downstairs would take about four hours and we would have time to start the hallway. Not the case. We ended up working on the floors for over 10 hours and not even starting the trim.

It's trickier than you would think!

I hit a wall around 12:00pm

I was actually shocked by the look of the floors. I was not expecting all the dark and it was a lot busier than I expected. I was feeling a little nervous when we were only about a quarter of the way complete, it was not good. Around 1:00pm we decided to take a break and indulge in some McDonald's. After spending $30 on absolute crap food, Andrew and I were back from the dead (I even ate a Quarter Pounder)!

Nom nom nom

It was a long day and my poor parents realized that their bodies have changed a bit since the last time they did this 15 years ago. Mary started to get the giggles and Kurt got very quiet around 5:30pm...

Mary's got the giggles

Kurt refused to leave the closet

These kids are tired!

Around 7:00pm, we started to wrap things up. We were all exhausted and cranky but the floors looked beautiful and it was time to put the furniture back into the room.

Nancy and Jim stopped by to help!

The wood floor crew

All in all, it was a long day but a good day! We went to bed at 9:00pm with the downstairs floors looking beautiful :)

Dining room table is back!

Our little downstairs!

We had ripped up the tiles on the second floor hallway last week and we were determined to conquer the floors on our own the next day. We were up early and ready to get the job done!

Let's do this

My dressing room filled with wood

The cats were terrified when my parents were here to help with the floors but they were determined to help us. They had a lot of fun but they weren't the biggest help..

Timmy loves to play!

Helping Daddy

I was super impressed by Andrew and everything he learned on Saturday. He spent so much time and effort making sure that the floors were done right. 

Handy husband :)

After 11 hours of flooring, we still weren't done and it was getting too late to be hammering. We called it a night but I am impressed by how good of a team we were! Install wood floors together on our own, check!

Almost done!

Next weekend we hope to finish up the floors and put the trim up! We are planning to hold off on the third floor hallway until we really finalize the rest of the house :) I need to get Dan's room painted for him to move in November 1st as well! We won't be slowing down the renovations any time soon...

It's All About the Small Wins

This week I was lucky enough to be home with my boys so I kept busy with house projects as we prepare to install the wood floors. It was a good week! I was able to get so much done and I am really starting to feel settled in the house. I spent a lot of time in the basement painting the trim, which is now all ready for Saturday!

Happy we went with the 5 1/4"

That's a lot of trim!

While the trim dried, I went to to my favorite Benjamin Moore shop to pick out colors for our bedroom and office on the third floor. My mom came with me and taught me the importance of coordinating the colors. 

Bedroom, Office, Undecided

Since I have not paid any attention to our bedroom, I prioritized painting the room's walls and trim first. 

White walls

I originally bought a light purple for my dressing room and, since that is on hold, painted a sample on the bedroom walls to see if I would like it.

nope.

It was way too much, so I decided on the darker purple and painted the trim late Tuesday night.

Time to roll

It was a quick room to paint after the trim was complete and I am semi-happy with the results. It turned out much more purple than I anticipated, but I think it may also seem worse since the room is basically empty. I ordered sheer white curtains from West Elm, which should hopefully be in soon.

Very purple..

Today I walked into Anthropologie and found this awesome gold polka dot pillow for the bed. I was so excited and can't wait to buy more for the room!

Love polka dots!

On Wednesday morning we had a window company come out to give us a quote for replacing the four upstairs windows. Good news! Although we have water issues, it was recommended that we do not replace the windows until we make a few changes to the existing windows. The water damage we do have has been from 30 years of rain, so it is not imperative that we replace the windows immediately. I was very happy to hear this, it means I can finally hang my new curtains! I got the Oversized Adjustable Metal Rod in Brushed Metal from West Elm, which Andrew had to help me hang.

Mr. Handy Man

Andrew isn't thrilled by the lack of color in the house (which I love) so I decided on the Scribble Curtain in Midnight Blue, to add a little color to the hallway.

I like.

My sister came to West Elm with me and convinced me to buy two jewelry boxes I have had my eye on for a few weeks. I have had the same jewelry rack for about 8 years so it was time for a change and it will bring some fun to my depressing dressing room.

I need to put my jewelry in them!

After the bedroom was painted, I spent all day Thursday painting our office. Since Andrew is in grad school and I work from home on Fridays, it is really important that this room is comfortable. The paint made a huge difference and I am really happy with how things are beginning to take shape!

Cats helping to paint.. and covered in it.

I used the taupe color, which actually turned out more pink than expected but I really like it! Now I need to focus on slowly adding more to the room to pull it all together.

The upstairs is finally starting to come together so now I am starting to plan what I want to do with our nasty third floor bathroom. Since it is so small, I want to do something fun. I was inspired by the picture below that I found on Pinterest and I think I am going to go for it!

So fun.

My mom found this awesome website, Spoonflower, which has super fun wallpapers. I've never been into wallpaper, and it will definitely be more expensive than paint, but I think it could be really nice. I really like the Rainy Dots wallpaper, which will look similar to the picture above. This project will be put on hold for a few months but it is fun to begin planning!

We are now within 24 hours of getting rid of our old, nasty laminate and putting down the new Hickory! Earlier in the week we finished ripping up the tiles so our feet stuck to the floors all week.. not fun.

The final step before we begin nailing the wood down is laying down a paper and laying out the wood. The wood is a mix of lengths and shades, so the trick will be to make sure we spread out the dark wood. We called in the troops to help lay the paper and wood.            

Andrew's brother Dan came to help and chat about him moving into our guest room! Dan works in Horsham and has been living at home since he graduated last May so he is looking forward to moving into the city. It will be nice to have him around, he is the sweetest.

My next blog post will be all about our wood floor experience! Can't wait!

A Weekend of Surprises

Last week I wrapped up my Monday-Thursday life in Minneapolis and came home to a weekend full of house surprises. The weekend ramped up around 3am Thursday morning when Andrew heard the third floor toilet dripping. We have had trouble with the toilet since we moved in but it was finally time to call a plumber. 

Yes, that is a terrible towel..

We joined Angie's list a few months ago and I am so happy we did, as it helped us find both the electrician and plumber quickly and with good results. I called Roto Rooter early Friday morning and we had a plumber at the house within two hours. 

Fixing things up

It turns out we had a broken shut off valve, a quick but expensive fix. Luckily, I got a coupon from Angie's list and I made friends with the guys, so it ended up costing a little less than expected.

Roto Rooter buddies hoping to become famous from my blog :)

Since I will be home for the next week, I wanted to get started on the most depressing room in the house, my "dressing room." We went to Target last week and I found nice Threshold shoe and coat racks, which I was really happy about, and finally feeling inspired to start decorating.

Coat rack for my purses!

It has potential but it's just such a mess!

Closet full of work clothes

It was a rainy Friday afternoon so I cleaned up the room and started to prep for painting, when I discovered the window sill dripping water. I started to poke around a bit and ended up putting a hole in the wall just below the window sill, where water damage had rotted out the dry wall. 

Bummer.

I called a window company I found on Craigslist so they will be coming Wednesday to give us an estimate for replacing the four windows at the back of the house. After talking with my parents, we may be able to hold off a bit but we will see what our estimate looks like on Wednesday!

Just after the window disaster was found, we had an appointment with Home Depot to take a look at our kitchen. The current kitchen is functional but in need of an update and Home Depot was having a special on refacing kitchen cabinets. 

A sales rep came over to measure the kitchen and we picked out cabinets and counter tops based on the samples he brought.

Andrew choosing a counter top material.

I have had my eye on Martha Stewart's cabinet collection at Home Depot, so it was fun to pick the color and style and see how it looked in our own kitchen. I selected the Annandale cabinet style in "Sharkey Gray," for our estimate.

After selecting only cabinets (not including the back splash, appliances, or floors) we received the estimate: $52,00 for a full remodel, $26,000 for just refacing. I know we are young but we have done our research and this is an absolutely outrageous estimate. Sorry Home Depot, you won't be getting our business. 

I was pretty bummed about the window and the awful kitchen estimate when we received some very good news - our wood is in! We were told we could pick it up whenever, so we decided that we would spend Saturday morning painting a second coat on the living room walls so we could pick up the wood early Sunday morning.

Can't wait to get the new floors!

The cats are always helping us

Final coat of paint!

Since we were picking up 33 cartons of wood, we also needed to rip out the tiles in the living room so we had a place to put them when we got home. We spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening ripping out the tiles with a crow bar. 

Wine-fueled tile tearing

Making room for the new wood

Second floor landing

Bottom of stairs to the third floor

My biggest helper :)

The first problem with these tiles is that they are super heavy so we really had to be careful about how much we put in each bag. The second, and bigger, problem is where to dispose of them. Andrew got hustled at the South Philly dump near our house so we don't want to go back there and the other dump we know of is only open until 4:00pm and I can't lift the tiles by myself. Since we have so many houses being built around us, we have been dumping (illegally) in the dumpsters around the construction sites late at night.

Longer walk than we thought

We laughed the whole way to the dumpster

We made a lot of progress Saturday night with the tiles so we were up early Sunday morning to pick up the Penske truck and make the 80 mile drive to the Lowe's in Hamburg.

I'm not allowed to drive rental trucks anymore

While we had the truck, we decided to pick out the trim for the floors as well. 

We have no idea what we are doing so my wonderful mother, Mirky Birda, came to help us pick out the 5 1/4" trim.

Mary working it

I have definitely not given enough credit to my mom throughout this whole process. She has been amazing and such a great help as we have embarked on this little house adventure. Love you, Mirky! My dad will be making his big appearance on Saturday with the floors and I know he is going to be awesome as well!

That's a lot of wood!

Trying to  make sure everything is secure

The trim was 12' and we had a 12' truck, so it was a bit tricky

We spent yet another ridiculous amount of money at Lowe's, loaded up the truck, and made the trip back to Philly. I recruited some burly men to help unload the truck since each carton weighs 62 lbs. 

Mr. Cody being a huge help, as always

Andrew's new friend from down the street was such a help!

 The guys were great and it only took about 15 minutes to unload all the wood into the house!

That's a lot of wood!

Timmy can't wait to install the new floors!

This week I am home (yay!!) so we will rip up the rest of the tiles and get everything prepped for putting the floors in Saturday! We seriously cannot wait, it will really help make us feel more settled into the house! I am also hoping to paint my bedroom and office so we can get things cleaned up after the floors are installed.

I am also very excited to be home this week to meet our newest friend, Aris James Morton. This sweet little boy was born early last week to one of my favorite couples, Lauren and Spenser Morton. I am beyond happy for Lauren and Spenser and I just know this baby will have all the love in the world!

Love him already!