Beautiful Hardwood Floors, Here We Come!

We are in the process of refinishing our hardwood floors. We started the day after Thanksgiving and this is where we are now. The sanding is finally done, and tonight we are cleaning and preparing to stain. Calvin is currently vacuuming the walls.

Me in the dusty mirror.
The dust is awful. I'm pretty sure I will be finding dust for months.

We are refinishing the living room, dining room, hallway and two bedrooms. We are getting it all done at once.

I can't make this post without mentioning our current living situation. Now, don't get me wrong I am so excited that we are doing this, and I SOOO appreciate my wonderful husband for working so hard every night this last week and my awesome dad for helping every night too, but we are living in our basement with all of our stuff! I am a little embarrased to even show this, but I think most of you know that our basement never looks like this on a regular basis. Calvin said we could be on an episode of "Hoarders" if someone just saw our basement the way it is now. Mattress in the middle of the floor, clothes scattered everywhere. Now we just need to throw some dirty trash around and we are there! :)

What have we got ourselves into...?

A little preview of our current house project. More pictures to come.

DIY Roman Shades

Many of you wanted to know how I made the shade, and I am thrilled! I am glad you all love it as much as I do. Here is the link to the website that I found http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/2009/02/make-shades-out-of-mini-blinds.html
You can pretty much follow her basic instructions. I did a few things a little different.

First, I ironed and sewed the edges of my fabric to give it a cleaner look, and then instead of folding the fabric edges over the ends of the slats and gluing, I glued the slats on top of my sewed edges. Just make sure your fabric isn't shorter in width than your slats or the edges of your slats will stick out from behind your fabric.

The other thing I did different was I used Tacky Glue instead of fabric glue, because I didn't have fabric glue. Tacky Glue worked well. You need to make sure that when the glue dries it doesn't leave discoloration in the fabric. You will need to cut the tilt wand off, because you won't need it anymore. I also cut a hole in the fabric on the top for the cord to come through. I think she just left it behind the fabric so you have to reach behind the shade to pull it up. I don't know which is better. It might depend on exactly how your blind functions. It also helps to have someone hold the shade tight as you glue the fabric to the bottom of the blind. I didn't do this at first and the fabric wasn't flat when I held it up.

And there you have it! That is pretty much all there is to it. It is a really easy and inexpensive project. I loved the way mine turned out. Calvin even really liked it too, believe it or not. I made a few mistakes as I went, but the next one that I do will be that much better.

Bathroom Makeover

We finally finished our bathroom makeover. It took about a month to finish everything from start to finish. Here is a before picture.

And this is the scary nastiness when we started tearing everything out. Ick!

And....Drum roll please....



Here is a summary of what we did; we replaced the toilet, tiled the floor, replaced the baseboards, painted the walls, trim, and door, painted the vanity, replaced the light fixture, made a new shade, and Calvin sunk the mirror into the wall.

We replaced the old linoleum, and Calvin and my cousin Curtis laid some travertine tile. It looks so good! Thanks Curtis and Becca!

I made this roman shade for a total of $6 (one yard of fabric). I used the mini blinds that were previously hanging there. I think it turned out absolutely fabulous. I can't wait to make some for my bedroom.