Renovations 2015 Update

For us to accomplish the renovations of the living room we talked about before, the infamous "home renovations onion" has made its appearance. Nothing is as easy as it ought to be.

For us to be ready for the new furniture and accessories to be delivered in late March (Tanner's current estimate for when everything will have arrived), we wanted to have the wood floors sanded, stripped, re-stained, and finished in polyurethane instead of their current 27-year-old wax. Well, for the floors to have cured enough to put rugs down, we need to have the floors redone by the end of February--and so we've set it up that the week of February 23 we'll have that accomplished. Thanks to the Kuehns for the tip on using Hatcher's Floors--we look forward to seeing the results!

HOWEVER, to have the floors ready for Ed and company, we have to have the rooms emptied. That means the massive china cabinet and dining room table need to be moved, plus everything else that was in the room. We've already donated the two old couches and moved three bookcases down to the rec room; I'm not looking forward to this last bit, though. As you can see, the living room looks sparse as we're readying to paint!

Goodbye, beige!

HOWEVER, one of the things to move out of the dining room was the wine cellar. Mary had had the idea of knocking out her "desk" in the kitchen--it had never really been used as anything more than a landing pad for clutter--and moving it into that niche. So first up was demo-ing the desk, patching the wall, repainting the niche--then finding a cabinet to install in the leftover space and creating a mini-bar area--each of which took time, and precluded our getting to the main event.

I think you'll agree, the new wine niche is a great addition to the kitchen:

Our new wine niche, bar cabinet, and wine rack.

Remember how this used to be a desk?

We also are taking advantage of the floors being done by painting the walls in the living and dining rooms first…that way, won't have to worry too badly about drips! HOWEVER, whilst doing that, it emerged that a lot of trim work in the kitchen and foyer hadn't been done, so that's now on the to-do list.

So, to sum up: to install our new living room furniture, we have to redo the floors. Since we have to redo the floors, we ought to paint first. Since we have to empty the dining room, we ought to move the wine cabinet. Since we have to move the wine cabinet, we have to demo and rebuild a space for it first. Since we're making the kitchen nicer, we should take care of those hanging chads of undone trim work. See how the onion just keeps peeling?

At least this morning I got to put one of the colors on the wall in the living room. Here's a taste of what's to come--more later!

No longer beige! See, there's a difference with the air return duct!