Flooring continued

This week was the last of our short work-weeks- it's back to reality tomorrow- so we tried to cram as much work in last week as we could. We continued laying floors, this time in our master bedroom. That meant our furniture, including our bed, had to be moved out to the livingroom so we could prime and level the floor. We slept on the livingroom floor for three nights while the floor cured, including New Year's Eve, when I spent the evening curled up next to our dog,Toby, trying to protect him from the fireworks. Poor guy, does not handle them well at all!

While the bedroom floor cured we divided and conquered some outdoor projects to take advantage of the great weather. We are officially past hurricane season so Scott took down the bahama shutters outside, which let in a TON of light, I truly couldn't believe the difference. I also couldn't believe how clearly you could see into our house, specifically through the living room and into our master, from the road, yikes! So we made a quick trip to get blinds, which Scott hung for us. It's hard to tell in the picture, but this is a really big window, about 107" across, with three window panels, so we got three sets of the cordless 2" faux wood blinds that we love from Lowe's.

While Scott was taking down the shutters I was working on refinishing the chairs that have been in our garage for two months. Now that we have floors, we are ready to set up our dining set, so that means I really need to get to work!

The chairs are two different sets of four, both with similar square, cane backs. They were stained two different colors and I plan to just sand them to raw wood and clear coat them. I don't want/need them to match exactly, I'm also redoing the upholstery so they'll match enough.

I got all 8 chairs sanded down to 120 grit, I need to go down to at least 220, but its really time consuming and not great on my back.

For now, here's a progress picture:

Left is stained, right is sanded. I'm hoping for a beachy-boho type look.

The cane is two different colors/patterns in the sets, so I'll be painting it to match. If you're a fan of cane furniture, you know that painting it is a no-no, but as it's rather expensive to replace, relatively speaking (you buy it by the foot, each chair back would require about 2 feet, so its around $150ish just to buy the cane), so this is a temporary solution until I want to tackle that. Here's a pic of the painted cane (there's green tape around it, I promise it'll look better when it's done).

I also finished reupholstering the chairs. If you have looked at dining chairs with ugly fabric and wondered if you could change it, I am here to tell you you CAN. It was super simple and the only tools you need are scissors, pliers (or something to pull old staples), and a staple gun.

First you pull out the old staples (with your feet in the pool, ahh!)

The tool I used is something Scott got years ago to pull a panel off of a door on a car, but it's seriously my favorite tool, I use it for everything!

Once the staples are out, pull off the fabric, lay the chair cushion and seat on your fabric (right-side down), and cut out enough around the seat to overlap by about 2"

Starting at the top, grab the fabric, pull it towards the center of the seat and staple it down. Do that to the side closest to you, pulling the fabric taught, then the two sides.

Working out towards the corners (but leaving around 2-3 inches at the corners open), pull the fabric taught and staple.

When you're ready to do a corner, pull the fabric at the corner diagonally into the center and staple. Then pull the side pieces in one by one and staple to create a nice "pucker" at the corner.

Repeat on the other three corners, then trim the excess fabric so it's less bulky.

Once it's done, toss it under the table with the rest of them!

Taking the staples out was the most time consuming part, and my mom helped with that a month or more ago, so actually putting on the new upholstery took maybe ten minutes per chair, probably less, but I'm so happy with how they look (and they all match now!)

When it was time to start working on the floors we noticed the strangest thing... a set of footprints headed from the door to the bathroom. Small footprints, about a size 7, and they only went one way, almost as though the person leaving the prints realized the error of their ways and skipped to the outside, drier concrete on the way back from what I can only assume was an important mission. Perhaps they were grabbing the perfect pj pants from the bathroom? We shall never know.

A little feather edge concrete filled the footprints just fine (no need to freak out!), and we made quick work of the floors, only about 4 hours once we got going. Our master is small, so it went fast, but we also didn't have any complicated corners to cut around, so we really had a good rhythm going.

Once the flood was laid, we moved the furniture back in and enjoyed the beauty of our room!

As far as the master goes, we just have trim to put up (baseboards, window, and door trim), and a new door to put on, then we can focus on decorating! Exciting!!

We did a ton of hard work this week, but we did take time out for a kayak trip down the canal, Scott took the boat out, and I went geocaching with my parents, brother, niece, and nephew. .

There's an awesome bike trail not too far from our house, and we were able to find twenty caches in just a couple hours, with only one we couldn't find.

With floors (mostly) in, I feel like I'm seeing the progress I've been waiting for! I cleaned house today and for the first time, actually felt like things were coming together. It's felt a bit like an uphill battle of cleaning and working and never feeling like anything is done, but now it feels like we are so close to having this major step completed. I hope you are as pleased with the progress as we are :)