Guest bedroom remodel!

Kenny and I have one more fun remodel project to share with you! I'm embarrassed that they are so few and far apart, but we seem to get tied up doing other things and having fun....oh well, everyone goes at their own pace I suppose. And this one has really got us motivated to press on and get more work done!

Here is our before picture of the guest bedroom when we purchased the house...

Woo Hoo, that's a pink room *grins* Pink and silver metallic wall paper, and navy blue shag carpet...so, some of our first few steps involved wall paper removal, texturing the walls and repairing any flaws or nail holes, and ripping up that blue carpet.

Next we picked out a beautiful green (my favorite) paint color and replaced the old light fixture and fan with a brand new flush mount modern fixture.
Here I am doing some of the wiring for the new fixture, yay!

You can also see we hadn't painted the edges of the room yet *laughs* It was really fun to see what a difference the paint alone made. A big improvement in our eyes.

Then after the paint and fixtures were all updated, the next big decision was what to do on the floors. Carpet, tile, laminate, hardwoods...?.... We have both always loved the gorgeous rich luxurious look of hardwood floors so we decided to do some price checking around town. We were pleasantly surprised that hardwood floors weren't extravagantly more expensive than carpet, in fact, when you consider the price for installation of a nice carpet (something we weren't sure we could do ourselves) it actually turns out about the same as the hard wood!

So, we went exploring several times to our local Home Depot, Lumber Liquidators and some other hard wood flooring stores. We brought home a few samples and compared them to the existing wood trim we have in our house. Unfortunately we weren't really wowed by any of them. So, we kept looking online and discovered a beautiful maple wood that we were absolutely in love with.

I immediately ordered a sample and when it came in the mail and I opened the package my heart palpitated with glee! It was perfection!! AND within our price range! We ordered the wood and the underlayment and just waited with anticipation. About a week later Kenny picked up our boxes of wood and once we got them home we opened them right up to acclimate to the environment, but more so that we could see them and just drool *grins*

Next came some very important prep work. We cleaned off the concrete where the carpet and carpet pad had been, removed the carpet tack strips and Kenny, with a very special set of skills, gently removed all the base boards.
We also removed the closet doors and took the main door off it's hinges, just to give us plenty of room to work. Next we needed to under cut all of the door frames so that the wood flooring would have plenty of room to slide underneath, leaving a nice beautiful finish.
We used the underlayment and the sample piece of the wood (turned upside down to protect the finish) to determine the thickness and Kenny used an under cut saw to make all the cuts.
He's so good! We truly enjoy spending time together doing anything and have so much fun working on projects together. I don't know what I'd do without him.

then after one more good sweeping and vacuuming to get all those tiny pieces of sawdust up we were ready to lay the underlayment. This was probably the hardest part of the whole project *laughs*
We wanted to make sure it was super flat and completely smooth. We used small weights to hold down each end and even resorted to using 185 lbs of Kenny at one point *laughs*
He kept the sides from rolling down while I used a small razor blade knife to cut out around the closet and doorway.

We duct taped the seams of the underlayment, as per the package directions and were ready to go!

The first few rows went down without a hitch. We had borrowed two power saws from my Dad (thank goodness for Dad's, they are life savers!) and boy were we excited for the inaugural use of the compound miter saw. At the end of the row I measured the exact length of board we'd need to finish off the row and we proceeded out side for cut number one!
We always make a point to wear safety equipment, ear protectors and safety glasses and the such. I'm so glad that Kenny is safety conscious and protects that one set of ears and one set of eyes that he's got.
Before we plugged it in I excitedly grabbed the handle of the miter saw to demonstrate it's smooth as silk sliding and movement but was jerked to a halt....pulling with the strength of Hercules, "grrr, this thing is stuck, what's wrong" I mumbled under my breath.... "it needs WD40, go get me some WD40 Kenny" I said with authority. He of course lovingly complied and brought me a nice can of lubricant spray. But, before I went crazy hosing down Dad's saw with oil Kenny reached underneath and quickly loosened the lock allowing the saw to slide smoothly and easily on it's track. (yes, my face turned three shades of red) "I'll just keep this WD40 handy in case" I laughed.

So, from there on out Kenny was the saw expert. I measured and marked and he made every cut with ease *grins*
We worked basically all day, only stopping to glance at the Vikings vs. Saints championship football game between saw cuts and to grab a bit to eat. Yes, we caved on our no eating out for the month of January and ate McDonald's. It's okay, we needed a quick easy supper and we're back on track now. *smiles*

We worked and worked adding row after row. The closet and doorway required a skillful hand and lots of measuring. This time Kenny got to use my Dad's table saw to plane the boards down to the proper width.
This table saw was a really nice one that folds down to about two feet high for storage. Well, it took a few tries to figure out how to "unfold" the table saw so that it would stand up to regular table height. At one point Kenny suggested "let's just leave it low and pretend that we're midgets" *grins* well, I finally figured this one out and we had an adult sized, fabulous table saw *winks*
We also made use of Kenny's beautiful work bench that Dad made him for Christmas! It was the perfect height and came in so handy! Thanks Dad!!

Finally, our hard work was finished and we just stopped, stood back and admired the most gorgeous dark maple hardwood floors we'd ever seen.

We still need to refinish and re-attach the baseboards, and of course move some furniture and accessories in, but we felt quite a sense of accomplishment and can't wait to add more wood floors to our home!

Thanks for joining in the adventure! *grins*