Step Two....and Three....

of our flooring project.  Remember step one was mentioned several months ago in this post here.

It turns out buying our new floors was the quickest part of the project.  The 40 boxes of flooring ended up sitting in our music room for a while before we did anything with them.  When we finally got to the "Put in new floors" part of our "Things to Do Around the House" checklist, we decided to have our handy next door neighbor take care of the installation.

While our house quickly turned into a construction zone and a complete disaster, it was nice to have brand new floors in all four rooms in just five days.  We shoved most of the furniture and accessories into our room to make it easier for them to lay the floor.

See what I mean, it was a wreck!

Then came one of my favorite parts of the project.  Ripping out the hideous outdated vinyl floor and....

the brown carpet.  I don't think we were even a bit sad to see this go.

It would have been amazing, if underneath all the old flooring we found hardwood; but instead we found this hospital-like linoleum tile throughout the entire house.

After the carpet and vinyl flooring was ripped out, a moister barrier was laid.  Then came a slightly padded underlayment for cushion and to help with sound, since we are on a slab.

Of course, this is the only in-between picture I took, probably because it was a pretty quick process after the doorways were cut out.

It was so fun to come home one evening and see this in our living room!

Some people cautioned us about putting the flooring in the kitchen because of possible swelling from spills.  Well, Drew Babe decided to perform his own MythBusters by soaking a scrap piece of flooring in a bucket of water for several hours.  While our floor will hopefully never be "soaking" for several hours, we found the scrap piece had no swelling at all.

Myth:  Does laminate wood flooring swell when in contact with water?

Finding:  Busted!  (at lease with our floors)


 (side note:  I promise I don't usually decorate our kitchen table with swords:)

To give everything a finished look, we had shoe molding installed.  Drew Babe decided to go ahead and give the baseboards a fresh coat of paint because the shiny new floors made every scuff and nick on our baseboards stick out like a sore thumb.

Once I get the house cleaned and straightened up, I will post a complete "before" and "after" of The Martin House flooring project.

Step One

Well, we just checked off step one of our next big project.

For the past year we have talked off and on about installing new floors in the family room, kitchen, and (if we found a too-good-to-be-true great deal) the guest bedroom and music room.  We were waiting for just the perfect deal on the color we wanted.

Our waiting and searching eventually paid off.  A couple weeks ago Lumber Liquidators (or as Drew would call it, Liquid Lumberdators) had an awesome deal on cherry laminate flooring.  The price ($0.79 per square foot) seemed perfect, yet we still couldn't decide.  After pondering on that $0.79 per square foot for a while, I decided to check the Lumber Liquidators' website another time and noticed the price had been dropped to $0.59 per square foot.

I gave Drew Babe a quick call at work and we decided to jump on it.  Next thing you know, we have 40 boxes of laminate wood floor stacked in our music room.

Because of the great price, we were able to get enough to cover our entire house, except our bedroom (the carpet in there is still fairly new).

Not quite sure when this project will start, but I know we are both excited to check off the first step of saying goodbye to this:

and this:

When searching for our floor, we both liked the medium wood shades.  We settled on a cherry laminate flooring:

I'll be sure to keep you posted as we tackle this project of covering nearly 1000 square feet with laminate flooring.  We're open for any thoughts, tips, or suggestions :)

Daily Double

You have pretty much hit the jackpot with this post, because it is actually 2 posts in 1!  The reason for this is because we didn't take any "after" pictures of our new family room curtains without capturing our newly finished family room accent tables as well....soooo we had to include it all in one :)
(we are still working on being sure to get all the "before" and "after" pictures.  Drew is much better about it than I am.)

Here is a true before picture of our family room.  No picture frames.  No wall shelf.  No curtains.  Pretty boring and kinda gloomy if you ask me.

(Make sure you notice the wood tables and naked bare window, because they will look completely different by the end of this post)

The loooonng window definitely needed something to make it look more finished.  To bring more white into the room, we decided simple white panel curtains would be the best for this window.

We scored a pair of white curtains for our family room on our Ikea adventure.  We purchased the Lenda style curtains for only $29.99 a pair!  They have a linen like texture and we were able to hem them to the exact length we needed (just skimming the floor) with Ikea's iron-on hem strip.  Super easy and super perfect!

(Please excuse the pillows.  I am normally pretty good about fluffing them:)

To tie in the darker accents in the room, we found an oil rubbed bronze curtain rod at Bed, Bath, & Beyond (where we still had wedding gift cards and coupons).  Drew Babe hung the rod close to the ceiling to make our ceilings appear taller and to lengthen the window.  I usually go with "high and wide" when hanging curtains (this blog has some great tips on hanging curtains).

Often it seems during some of our Martin House projects I am simply the one giving orders directions, and making sure things are straight or even, but with our curtain project I got to iron (and hem) the curtains all by myself.  Here is proof of me trying to be a good wifey:

Now....I have to switch gears a bit.

After purchasing the white curtains, we realized they were going to be the only white item in the family room.  There needed to be something else to tie them in.  We had talked about looking for new coffee and accent tables, but we actually really liked the style of ours, just not the color.  We tossed out the idea of staining them, but then I suggested painting them white to go with the curtains.  At first, Drew was a little unsure about the idea.

We certainly did not want them to stick out like a sore thumb, so we had to be sure to pick the perfect white.  That was no easy task.  After bringing home dozens of whites, looking at them in daylight and artificial light, and comparing them to various other "whites" in our house, we finally settled on Crumb Cookie from Lowe's in a semi-gloss.

We hauled the three tables out to the garage to begin the project.  Our first step was to remove all the legs to make it easier to get good paint cover.

The most tedious task was sanding them down.  To make this step of the project more exciting, we worked on this together (Drew Babe with his pro electric sander and me with my little square of sand paper).  We enjoyed laughing, chatting, and singing (sometimes to spice it up even more, I would break out into spontaneous dancing, and I am no dancer by any means).

To get all the dust off we wiped everything down with a warm damp rag.

On to the primer!  Fortunately we already had a gallon of primer and simply applied 1 (or 2...I can't remember) even coats of the primer.

The primer was super bright white, so we were hoping our Crumb Cookie would not come out looking like that.  We were going for a little bit warmer, but not yellowy, white.

Drew thought it would be a great idea to get a picture of the table with half primer and half Crumb Cookie to really show the color difference.  Fortunately we didn't have to make numerous trips to Lowe's to tweak our paint, because as you can see, the white color came out perfect!

After doing the final coat on all the tables, we let it dry for a day or two.  Drew Babe wanted to give the top of the tables a stronger finish and decided to apply a couple coats of spray enamel.  It turned out really well and they are super easy to clean.

Here is the finished room with the white curtains and the white tables.

 Having the white tables and the white curtains helps to brighten the whole room and make it feel lighter and fresh...if you know what I mean (Drew always says I have the most interesting adjectives when I describe decorating things).

We both love our new brighter and whiter family room.  I may even change up the pillows on the couch sometime to make them pop a bit more.  For a long time I was so afraid to decorate with white, because sometimes it can be so stark.  Now I am finding I love white more and more, and there are definitely ways to make it warm and cozy :)

The TV Wall

Deciding what to do with the open space around the TV has been a prolonged decorating struggle for me.  First, I thought a large round mirror would look great, but that still left the walls bare on either side of the TV.

While on our Ikea adventure, we found a wall bookshelf for a great price.  The color matched our entertainment stand almost perfectly, so we thought this would help take up some of the wall space around the TV.  Drew Babe soon suggested we also make use of the dozens of gallery frames we received from our wedding registry, but had not made use of yet.  Sounded like a great plan to me!

Here is what the TV wall originally looked like.  Bare.  Boring. And just plain blah.   The first step of redesigning the wall was to get rid of the dust collector ficus tree. 

Drew likes symmetry, so we decided to do two frames on either side of the TV.  We only used four and still have several left over which we could use elsewhere.

Drew installed the Ikea bookshelf and we filled it with some vintage books we already had in the attic.  I love how the colors of the books really pop and bring out the colors we already have in our living room.

See how closely the color matches the stand.  It's like they were made for each other!

Drew Babe is super precise, but it pays off in the end when everything looks even.

And there you have it.  The finished product!  (And a lovely picture of Bruce Willis.  Not sure what movie this is, but bonus points for you if you know:)

We still need to find pictures to put in the frames around the TV.  We were thinking of doing some wedding pictures, because even a whole year later, we still haven't order any wedding prints.  Do you think all black and white, color, or maybe a mix?  Eventually we will replace the monochromatic Target scene in the frames, and somehow find a way to disguise all the cords.  At least the TV wall is a bit more interesting now.