I should have taken pictures of the floors in our new house before we had them refinished. When we closed on the house last week, it had a rather non-descript old brown carpet on the floor in the living room and dining room. The two downstairs bedroom had newer berber carpet. We decided to have the carpet pulled up and the floors sanded and refinished. They look great! I am so pleased with the finished product. Thanks to our contractor friend who recommended the floor guys we used.

The bathroom downstairs is very small. It seems I am destined to always live in a house with a small bathroom. The benefit is that painting (and cleaning) a small bathroom is easier than painting (and cleaning) a large one. I chose a blue color for the walls. It turned out to be much darker than the paint sample, so Evangeline and I did a sponge effect over the blue with white paint. It is not perfect, but it does cover up the few rough spots in the plaster. I have hopes of eventually using white tile paint to cover up the ugly gold 70s wall tile that goes half way up the walls. I saw a porcelain paint kit at Home Depot that looks like it would work to paint the tile and the ugly gold marble-effect basin on the sink. Until such a day as we could afford to really redo the bathroom, these quick fixes will be good enough.

I wasn’t able to finish the painting of the rooms downstairs because the floor guys were there, and we can’t walk on them until tomorrow. However, I did a lot of the master bedroom before the floor guys were done. I have to finish a bit on each wall, and I have one wall that is completely unpainted. It is the wall where I made the mistake of taking the wallpaper off. I originally planned to paint over the wallpaper. But I came across one little tear, so I decided to see how it would come off. The first strip was great. So I kept going. I ended up pulling off a layer of plaster paper that left a wall that looked like a giant map from chips of the plaster paper all over the wall. And, it wouldn’t come off. So I used wall plaster putty to try to smooth out the rough edges. Now, before I can paint I have to sand it flat. It seems like simple jobs never remain that way!