As I write this week’s Sunday Farm update – I am wondering in retrospect about the sanity of trying to complete an entire dining room remodel in a 36-hour period.
The dining room as it looked Friday before the project began – old carpet and all.
Actually, at this point there is no wonder at all for myself or Mary. In fact, our inability to move a single muscle without pain this morning proves that it is indeed utterly insane! 🙂
As we continue to plan out the new house at the farm – one of the biggest challenges is finding time to prepare our current home for sale.
Our current house has served us well – especially since it is located just a few miles from the high school. But with two kids already in college and the two remaining nearing graduation – we are getting close to the final goal of selling our suburban home and building our final home at the farm – and that means getting our house ready for sale.
After ripping up the carpet and padding, it was on to removing the 2000 staples in the floor!
Last year it was putting on a new roof and painting – this year, it has been replacing storm doors, porch doors, screens – and yes – this weekend’s project of updating the dining room with a wood floor, trim and a fresh coat of paint.
The dining room is one of those areas of the house that we rarely use – and a great reason why we will not have one in the new house. What it really has become is a storage area – housing our wine rack, canning cabinet and a very under-used farm table. Because of its lack of use – it has also for the most part remained untouched, including the original carpet that was there at move in – it was time to update!
With the walls all painted and the new padding down , the floor went down quickly
Much like any project we tackle at the farm – we decide to make the best of it by having a little fun. In this case – setting a little goal to complete it together by Saturday night.
And so “Project Dining Room” began early Friday evening – first by moving out the 300 pint and quart jars that filled our canning cabinet, along with every bottle of wine in the wine rack. I have to admit after that exhausting chore – I was ready to set a new goal of perhaps just seeing if we could drink the wine! We finished off Friday evening by ripping up the carpet, padding and 2000 staples from the sub-floor – and stumbled to bed.
The finished floor with just the trim to finish.
I have to say that Saturday morning came way too soon – but with the Saturday night goal in mind, we got after it by painting the base walls and laying the new padding by late morning.
Next came laying down the distressed hickory floor – which in reality ended up being the easiest part of the entire project. We finished it all off in the early evening by nailing in the last piece of trim – and project “Dining Room” was in the books.
All in all – the project went surprisingly smooth. By the evening’s end – we even had the wine rack back in place and filled – well, minus perhaps a bottle or two :).
The wine rack back in place in the finished room!
The good news – the project is complete! The bad news – a single movement to the left or right this morning by either of us seems to cause instant cramping of muscles we were unaware we even possessed!
Happy Resting! Jim and Mary
If you would like to receive our posts each week on Gardening, Cooking, Canning and a DIY Approach to Living – be sure to sign up to follow the blog via email in the right hand column, “like” us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.