dining room | The Big White Farmhouse

June 11, 2012

{home} Getting Ready to Sell: How to Survive a Hardwood Floor Installation

I have had “hardwood floors” on my home improvement list practically since the day we moved in. But like most of you, money doesn’t grow on trees here…bummer. So we started a meager home improvement fund and put a little money aside when we could. Five years and a lot of patience later, the day has come!

BEFORE THE INSTALLATION

The weekend before the installers were to arrive, we moved all of our furniture and toys out of the living and dining rooms. Stupidly, I thought this would be a simple, maybe even quick process. Um…WRONG! It quickly turned into a real life version of Tetris. But we prevailed and the rooms were cleared:

Side story on the unsightly blue stain on the carpet: Way back in December, my cousin was visiting and we updated my bedroom. After a late night paint party, we left the can, which was 3/4 full, downstairs in the dining room. Fast forward to the next morning: one of my sweet cherubs tipped the can over (with a lid not on as tightly as we thought!) and dumped paint in a lovely circular pattern onto the carpet! After a lengthy interrogation with the big boys, we determined a sweet 12-month-old did the crime. At that point, you just had to laugh. Needless to say, that lovely stain has been “hidden” under a towel for the past six months. Keepin’ it real! 🙂

So back to the pre-installation prepwork. With two empty rooms, you may wonder where all of that furniture was stored. Exhibit A:

Fortunately, we had an amazing company work for us. The…hmm, what do you call him? A carpenter? Floor guy? Anyway, Cesar (that was his name) was super fast, but thorough and detail-oriented. He had the carpet ripped out and the new floor down in a day and a half, for which I was forever grateful. Having my three kids stuck in two bedrooms for eight hours was tough!

This is the flooring we picked: Bruce Engineered Hardwood in Gunstock Oak.

AFTER INSTALLATION
And now the after pictures. I still need to work on the mantle and find a suitable coffee table, but for now, we’ll call it done!

May 29, 2012

{home} Getting Ready to Sell: Progress on the Dining Room

Today I’m starting a new series on the Big White Farmhouse: Getting Your House Ready to Sell!

As much as we adore our sweet little home, the time has come to get it ready to put on the market. One of the big changes I’ve been referring to lately is that my husband got a new job. An awesomely great job that he deserves. But like every awesome thing, it doesn’t come without challenges. And one of those challenges is moving in this horribly awful housing market. Perfect timing, right?

With Baby #4 in utero until October, we have decided to wait until the end of 2012/beginning of 2013 to put the house on the market. So that gives me 6ish months to whip this house into selling shape!

Now let me be the first to tell you that I have absolutely no qualifications when it comes to house selling and I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But I do look at a lot of pretty homes in magazines and on Pinterest and I do love to research, so I’m hoping we can all learn together!

So today: the dining room. Before I painted last weekend, this is what it looked like:

A whole lotta red. My husband loved it, I tolerated it. But we all know Rule #1 in the Home Selling Handbook is “paint neutral colors” so the red had to go. I used YOLO Colorhouse Paint in Stone .02 that I ordered through Amazon. A couple hours later, and we had this:

HUGE difference. The room instantly felt taller and larger. But I’m not done yet! Check out what’s left on my to-do list:

I’ll be back soon with updates! Until then, what about you? Have any tips for staging a dining room?

P.S. Don’t mind the fact that one of my sweet innocent children broke one of the drawers off my antique dresser/sideboard. Jury’s still out whether I can fix it.
P.P.S. That sweet innocent child is hiding under the table. Can you see him?

July 27, 2011

{home} Dining Room Makeover: Board and Batten!

I have seen Board and Batten all over the DIY blogs for months now. It immediately went on my list of “must do!” because I knew it would be just the thing to add a little character to our builder’s grade, non-descript house. And the stars seemed to align last week, when my sweet husband declared a four-day “staycation” and said we should tackle one of the projects on my list.

And boy, what an adventure. I used this, this and this blog as inspiration and for some direction. The process is pretty self-explanatory and easy, just time consuming with lots of painting!

But enough words. Here is my new and improved dining room:

July 26, 2011

{home} Dining Room Sneak Peak!

Just a sneak peak! The full post will be coming soon! Mark surprised me with a little four-day “staycation” and we got a project crossed off of my list: Board and Batten! More details to come!!

————–P.S.

A heads up in case you are in the market for new light fixtures: on our trip to the big blue store, they had CRAZY deals in the lighting department! The prices were so great that we decided to snatch two light fixtures for the upstairs bathrooms!

Less Materialism, More Intentional Living

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