Remodel - Living Room

In July of 2013, my hubby and I moved to the house that his grandparents bought when they got married and where they raised their family.  She passed away March of 2013, leaving the little house empty and with the possibility of it being sold. We both value family a lot, and we knew we weren't going to be able to afford to have our own family in the tourist town that we lived in because, at least to me, housing prices there were astronomical. So, we moved 2.5 hours from where we were back to his hometown.

My dad helped us do some updating before we settled in for good.  I've helped my dad remodel houses from the time I was in elementary school all the way up to high school. In the beginning, I did a lot of falling asleep while sitting on five gallon buckets because I was bored and couldn't do very much. As I got older he trusted me to do more and more. My dad has had a few not so great moments with power tools, particularly saws, and I think that's why he didn't want me to use them too much growing up (he wanted me to grow up with all ten fingers).

I think I will have to do this in phases because it involves a lot of uploading pictures!

Living room: Before, during and after.

The polyurethane was completely gone in the center of the floor!
And the wood paneling had to go.

When we took the wood paneling down this was one of several things we found in the drywall.
Needless to say, my dad and I were not amused!
And if you're not sure why we were not amused it's because someone punched two holes into the drywall
and then drew a smiley face!

The walls are looking good, but we still have to do something about that floor.

The floors were not nice to us at all!
The house has settled since it was built in 1956 (I think I have the date right) and the floors were uneven.
Someone had used mop and glo on them and there was a coat of wax we had to get off before we could sand.
That was a fun day of being on our hands and knees using acetone to strip off the wax.
I'm not as cool as my dad; I had to hang my head out the window a lot because I was dry heaving from the fumes!

My dad putting down stain.
He was not happy about my choice to stain or the stain color. LOL
I kind of learned why he was not happy about staining when we came back and had to spend
another day on our hands and knees wiping up the excess stain.   :(
We both learned a valuable lesson in all of this, we will NEVER refinish a hardwood floor ourselves again.

Ahhhh, all done.
I still have some decorating to do, but that always takes me a while because I
like to collect certain pieces, and then I'll eventually figure out where I want them to go.
And, we did not update any lighting yet, just FYI.
I thought bright white would be a nice color since the rooms are so small,
but now I'm thinking maybe a light beige would have been nice.
I may change that sometime. And, my dad will kill me when I do!

Ignore that contraption in the corner, that's a cat house Brian made for Eliot.
And, I left a piece of burlap on top of it, whoops.
I still need to kilz all the moulding because there is floor stain on it.
Once that is done we will put quarter round down throughout the house. 

The arm chair was his grandma's. It was the only one that was not totally
destroyed by the cats that lived with her (I say it like that because they were not her cats).
I like the chair, but I want to reupholster it sometime down the road.
And, I still need to paint that ugly door!