Bedrooms First...PLEASE: Phase 1

When you are gutting EVERY room of the entire house it is hard to know where to start, especially if you are living in it at the same time. It's not a clean canvas, so you have to wipe the slate clean (demo and tear out) and start again.

So we thought about it, debated, and thought about it some more and we finally agreed we needed to get the bedrooms done first. My rationale was that when EVERYTHING else was in shambles I would have one place to go to get away from it all.
This meant that we wouldn't be living in our bedrooms for the first phase of this renovation. So, as we moved in we set up our "bedrooms" in the two small living rooms that were divided by a massive double sided fireplace. The kids slept in Tanner's Queen bed on one side and Steve and I were on the other. We lived out of boxes and suitcases. It was an interesting two months and lets just say we didn't have anyone over for dinner.

I really didn't think it would take to long, a few days...maybe a week at the most. How hard could it be to take down some wall paper, take out baseboards, tear up carpet, paint a few walls, and lay down the bamboo floors? Heck, they do it on HGTV in no time at all. Man was I wrong...terribly WRONG. Perhaps if we had hired a crew and that is what they did all day it could have been possible. However, we didn't, in fact we are doing everything 100% on our own, in the evenings or on weekends when we are not at work. So, as I was stripping off wall paper I realized in the master bedroom that it was going to take much...much...long (see this post to hear about that nightmare). I soon readjusted my goal to have it done before we were back in school. August came quickly, but we got it DONE!

Master Bedroom...



The beginning....Love the wallpaper?

Step 1: We started in a purple flowery wallpaper covered room. Once the wallpaper was removed we knew we had some work to do.

 

Step 2: Once we removed the wall paper we realized that we were going to have to retexture the wall before we could paint. So, Steve started to sand and then TEXTURE the walls. Side note: Wall texture STINKS.... Once the texture dried we started to paint. Can I say we found the best paint roller EVER (find it here). It was totally worth the extra money. It was faster and less of a mess. For the master bedroom we used Valspar Lambs Ear.





 

sanding the walls...        texturing the walls....          painting the walls...





Step 3: Put up door trim. I don't know if I have mentioned it yet, but Steve is an extremely talented carpenter. When we went looking for trim he couldn't find anything he LOVED (I'm less picky in these areas), so he decide to route his own. It turned out FABULOUS.




 Step 4: Rip up the carpet and install the Bamboo Floors. When we bought the house we went straight away to Home Depot to start looking at things. I found these bamboo floors that I LOVED at a great price and we bought them right away. We had to go to Lowes to find the Bostik Wood Floor Adhesive. Steve was adamant that we get this one because it has a water barrier that prevents moisture damage from the sub floor. We live in FL, so moisture is what we breath. Oddly enough the MOST expensive part of all of this seems to be the wood floor glue. Installing the floors was not difficult at all. In fact, I think I could do it on mine own at this point.

Step 5: Install the baseboard, put up new fan, and install new light and outlet covers. Once this was done it looked like a finished room. I was soo excited and pleased with how it turned out! 

Step 6: Move in furniture! I couldn't wait to move in our furniture! No more living out of boxes and suitcases, a bed on a frame, and some order to life. The little things we take for granted...

A bedroom...at last!