Home Ownership, part, eh... who's counting anymore...?

So last weekend, I gave up.
Since we moved into this house, I kept thinking that our renovations would take much less time than they have in reality. When we bought the house in February, I thought - surely we can get everything done in a month. If we just work work work, we'll get it done. But after two months, I kinda had a breakdown, and cried for like a full weekend because our house was still such a mess. Then, after March had passed, I thought - okay. Three more months, and surely we'll be finished. Not as quick as I thought it would be, but hey, what can ya do? Sure enough, two weeks ago, I had a similar breakdown as the one in March. There was a some crying involved, and a whole lotta, "I can't LIVE like this anymore!!!" Which can be at least somewhat understood, because THIS:



is what my livingroom looks like right now....!! (Notice the dust under the side table and sofa... Even after putting up protective plastic, the dust carried to EVERY single part of the house.... Aye aye aye...)

So. last weekend, I gave up. I came to the realization that it will probably be at the very least six more months before I really feel like this house is "done." That it's at a point where I feel like it's 'home,' and I don't have to apologize every time somebody comes over. And even then, we still probably won't have all the little projects done. And even if we do have all the little projects done -- we won't have even touched the outside..... Living in a construction zone for a year wasn't exactly what I had in mind when we bought our first place, but I just keep telling myself that when everything's finally finished, it'll be worth all the hard work and discomfort, and we'll have a home that's ten times better than it was when we found it.... Here's hoping!

The most recent project - that only took two weekends - was the flooring on the kitchen side of the house. We have a dining/kitchen/eat-in/utility/half-bath on one side of our house, and the floor extends throughout each of these spaces, so to make it feel more open and cohesive, we decided to carry the same staining/scoring treatment all the way from one end to the other. I think it turned out nicely. It's a little darker than our original plan, but I think we can work it out in combination with the other changes we're planning. Here are some before/during/after shots. All of them are taken from our utility room.

This is after ripping up the carpet in the dining room and the vinyl in the kitchen/utility/half-bath, and sanding the concrete down.

After scoring. I know the color looks different, but it's just the lighting. At this point, it was still boring old gray.

This is post-staining, pre-sealing. I loved the color after this step, and I kinda wish we could've left it like this, but since concrete is porous, it's not the best idea to leave it unsealed.

And finally, post-sealer. Again, the color looks super yellow because of the lighting (and because of my camera), but it's a little darker and browner than this. This is one of the first projects that I think David and I worked on together - just the two of us - from start to finish, so it feels really good to look at what we did as a team. :)

Yesterday, we had to clean the residue off of the floor and let it dry for eight hours before we could seal it, so we went to hang out with the Walkers for the afternoon. I gave Josh a haircut, and since I was playing beauty shop, we all decided as a group that I should straighten David's hair with Angela's Chi. David was not so happy with the result, but it makes me giggle. :)

Teeheeheeeee..... :)


"Me and you. And you and me. No matter how they tossed the dice, it's meant to be. The only one for me is you, and you for me. So happy together.....! Bum bum bum bum bum buh duh duh duh duh duh. Buh bum bum bum....."