Skipping right along...
Technically, after I finished up the bedrooms and the hallway, I focused on the kitchen, the dining room and the den in Marguerite's house. I was kind of all over the place (typical). But for the sake of sanity... and because the kitchen deserves it's very own write-up, I shall focus this blog on the dining room and the den.
At some point in the early 60s, Marguerite's house got an addition (actually, before Marguerite and her family even moved into it). The addition included everything on the end of the house: the den, laundry/mudroom, and the second bath. The porch was enlarged and the front door was moved to the side to lead into the new den. The room that Marguerite had set up as her very large dining room used to be the living room prior to the addition (which explains why it is so big).
Much like when the return vents were relocated, the finish work on the wall where the front door used to be was "lacking". They converted it into a window, but below the new window was a very bad patch. I actually had to remove the drywall patch and start over. There really wasn't a way to just sand this down and make it look right. I also had to do this on the opposite wall where the return vent used to be in this room. And remember that never ending cycle of mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding craziness? Totally got to do that again on both of these patches and the ceiling.
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| It's hard to see the severity of how rough this is, but this is where the return vent used to be. |
While spending many hours making friends with my putty knife and my mouse sander, I had a lot of opportunities to overanalyze the hard wood floors. They were in great condition considering that the house was built in 1950. But, sanding floors, staining them, and putting on several coats of poly was something I had never done... and had seen plenty of people screw up. You can rent a floor sander from Home Depot and read the manual and start a huge project like that with great intentions... and then end up with a giant mess. It is really easy to gouge wood floors with industrial sanders. Add to that, I wanted to stain the floors darker to cover the few spots in the wood. If you don't sand the floor correctly, staining it only highlights your errors. I opted to call in the pros for this and it is probably a good thing that I did.
In addition, freshly smoothed out and painted surfaces make all of the 65-year-old windows look like absolute crap. I decided, after months of staring at/out of these windows, that new windows were probably going to be required to make the house really pop.
The dining room got lots of smoothing/sanding, new paint, refinished floors, new windows, new faux wood blinds, new receptacles, and a new light fixture (my sister bought).
I think the before/after on this one is pretty awesome.
And then we have the den. As you may or may not recall, this room has paneling.
Not fancy wood paneling that is lovely and refinish-able, but sad, thin, 1960's, fake-ass wood paneling. The good news is that it isn't plaster, so I didn't have to mud and sand it for months. The bad news is that it is paneling. Painted paneling is less offensive, I think. So it got the same gray treatment that everything else did. However, this room required priming 4 (FOUR!) times and 3 (THREE!) coats of paint. The finish on the paneling just kept bleeding through with this terrible yellowish hue. Luckily for me, my brother, his wife and my sister all helped with priming and painting these two rooms.
In addition to the paint, new receptacles, new windows, a new black fan (just like the bedrooms), and a faux wood blind, the den also got a brand new front door and screen door and a new closet system. My mom and step-dad hung the closet system and the new doors (and cussed and cussed and cussed). Apparently, hanging exterior doors is not a fun job. To the extent that when it came time to hang the back door, they both noped on out of that one. lol
And last but not least, new flooring of course. I mean, I know everyone is completely in love with that horrible terra cotta broken tile mosaic, but not me. lol I opted for a floating floor in a hickory finish. When the rest of the actual hardwood was refinished, I had them match the stain to this floor I purchased. It makes everything look original since it matches. Installing any floor starts with removing all of the quarter round trim (shoe moulding). This is the little piece of trim in front of the baseboard (you put it back on over the floor once installed). You then put down the underlay. It provides a moisture and sound barrier (sounds less hollow when you walk on it).
The underlay rolls out like wrapping paper and has an overlapping strip that sticks to the next piece (the overlap is on the right edge). The actual floating floor is installed using a simple install kit that includes: a tapping block (to tap the pieces into place after locking the long edge), a pull bar (to pull the pieces into place that are close to the wall), and spacers (to allow room between the floor and the baseboard so it can "float" and flex as it swells and contracts with the temperature).
You will also need a saw to cut the boards to fit. I used a compound mitre saw to chop boards on the short side, a circular saw for cuts on the long side, and a jigsaw for any unique cuts (around door facings). In addition, if you are installing flooring into an existing room, you will also need a flush cut saw to cut off the bottom of your door jambs (flooring has to slide under the door jamb because there is no trim on the bottom of it). There are fancy electric door jamb saws that would do this in a matter of seconds. Those are upwards of $150 and literally are only for cutting off the bottom of door jambs. If you were putting new flooring throughout a house, it might be worth it just to save time. I however, used a screwdriver, a hammer, a chisel, and this:
Installing a floating floor isn't really that difficult. My biggest recommendation is that you start in a corner on the longest wall. It is impossible to tap the boards into place if your line of boards ends with a door opening (ie. start in the corner). They will continue to shift over, no matter how you try to block off the doorway, or how much weight you put on the boards to hold them down (learned this the hard way). Once the first row of boards are down, it is just a matter of locking them on the long side and tapping them into place on the shorter side. I choose to complete a full row, then use the piece that was cut off the end to start the next row. This means that none of the seams line up and creates the least amount of waste. Some people prefer to have the floor installed in a uniform pattern (offset by a certain number of inches). I actually like the randomness of not doing it that way because I think this is how they laid actual wood floors back in the day.
A reminder photo of where this room started:
And where we ended up:
Side note: this floating floor was a nightmare. They are typically very easy to install with the appropriate tools. I opted for a cheaper floor ($1/sq ft) because I actually liked it. It is textured to look like actual wood (the smooth finish ones look soooooo fake). It is a darker finish which I wanted for the whole house. It is the single plank look: the whole board appears to be one 8 inch plank instead of three little planks like actual hardwood. I think this makes it look more natural because you wouldn't have three planks of hardwood with the seams all lined up in a row on an actual hardwood floor. It was also still 12 mm thick, which is thicker than some. However, installing a cheaper floor sometimes means more waste because it is more easily damaged with the tapping block. In general, you just have to be more careful with the boards. Which, in general, would not have been a problem for me.
However, we installed this floor as the first project I really worked on after I almost died in December 2016. My mom, my step-dad and I headed over there with all of the best intentions in March 2017. I had already started back to work (working from home) and although I had a temporary colostomy bag and I technically was still fighting off the infection that caused my septic shock... I was determined that this house was going to get DONE. I don't know what kind of karma helped me that day, but their friend (Paul Bunyan - who helped take the step out of the laundry room during the demo) stopped by to help us out. And I confidently can say that we wouldn't have finished without him. Floor work is bad on the back and the knees so it is something that my mom and step-dad cannot easily help with. I thought I was up to par to just do this shit. I was very wrong. In retrospect, I was a crazy person. That was waaaaaaayyyyy toooooooo big of a project to come back to on DAY 1 of returning from ALMOST DYING.
Have I mentioned I'm a little hard-headed?
In addition, freshly smoothed out and painted surfaces make all of the 65-year-old windows look like absolute crap. I decided, after months of staring at/out of these windows, that new windows were probably going to be required to make the house really pop.
I think the before/after on this one is pretty awesome.
And then we have the den. As you may or may not recall, this room has paneling.
Not fancy wood paneling that is lovely and refinish-able, but sad, thin, 1960's, fake-ass wood paneling. The good news is that it isn't plaster, so I didn't have to mud and sand it for months. The bad news is that it is paneling. Painted paneling is less offensive, I think. So it got the same gray treatment that everything else did. However, this room required priming 4 (FOUR!) times and 3 (THREE!) coats of paint. The finish on the paneling just kept bleeding through with this terrible yellowish hue. Luckily for me, my brother, his wife and my sister all helped with priming and painting these two rooms.
In addition to the paint, new receptacles, new windows, a new black fan (just like the bedrooms), and a faux wood blind, the den also got a brand new front door and screen door and a new closet system. My mom and step-dad hung the closet system and the new doors (and cussed and cussed and cussed). Apparently, hanging exterior doors is not a fun job. To the extent that when it came time to hang the back door, they both noped on out of that one. lol
And last but not least, new flooring of course. I mean, I know everyone is completely in love with that horrible terra cotta broken tile mosaic, but not me. lol I opted for a floating floor in a hickory finish. When the rest of the actual hardwood was refinished, I had them match the stain to this floor I purchased. It makes everything look original since it matches. Installing any floor starts with removing all of the quarter round trim (shoe moulding). This is the little piece of trim in front of the baseboard (you put it back on over the floor once installed). You then put down the underlay. It provides a moisture and sound barrier (sounds less hollow when you walk on it).
 |
| Note the new front door... |
The underlay rolls out like wrapping paper and has an overlapping strip that sticks to the next piece (the overlap is on the right edge). The actual floating floor is installed using a simple install kit that includes: a tapping block (to tap the pieces into place after locking the long edge), a pull bar (to pull the pieces into place that are close to the wall), and spacers (to allow room between the floor and the baseboard so it can "float" and flex as it swells and contracts with the temperature).
You will also need a saw to cut the boards to fit. I used a compound mitre saw to chop boards on the short side, a circular saw for cuts on the long side, and a jigsaw for any unique cuts (around door facings). In addition, if you are installing flooring into an existing room, you will also need a flush cut saw to cut off the bottom of your door jambs (flooring has to slide under the door jamb because there is no trim on the bottom of it). There are fancy electric door jamb saws that would do this in a matter of seconds. Those are upwards of $150 and literally are only for cutting off the bottom of door jambs. If you were putting new flooring throughout a house, it might be worth it just to save time. I however, used a screwdriver, a hammer, a chisel, and this:
Installing a floating floor isn't really that difficult. My biggest recommendation is that you start in a corner on the longest wall. It is impossible to tap the boards into place if your line of boards ends with a door opening (ie. start in the corner). They will continue to shift over, no matter how you try to block off the doorway, or how much weight you put on the boards to hold them down (learned this the hard way). Once the first row of boards are down, it is just a matter of locking them on the long side and tapping them into place on the shorter side. I choose to complete a full row, then use the piece that was cut off the end to start the next row. This means that none of the seams line up and creates the least amount of waste. Some people prefer to have the floor installed in a uniform pattern (offset by a certain number of inches). I actually like the randomness of not doing it that way because I think this is how they laid actual wood floors back in the day.
 |
| I think it's amazing how well this floor matches the hardwood in the dining room. |
A reminder photo of where this room started:
And where we ended up:
 |
| Those new windows made an epic difference. |
 |
| The coffee table and end tables were Marguerite's, I'm really glad they stayed in this room. |
Side note: this floating floor was a nightmare. They are typically very easy to install with the appropriate tools. I opted for a cheaper floor ($1/sq ft) because I actually liked it. It is textured to look like actual wood (the smooth finish ones look soooooo fake). It is a darker finish which I wanted for the whole house. It is the single plank look: the whole board appears to be one 8 inch plank instead of three little planks like actual hardwood. I think this makes it look more natural because you wouldn't have three planks of hardwood with the seams all lined up in a row on an actual hardwood floor. It was also still 12 mm thick, which is thicker than some. However, installing a cheaper floor sometimes means more waste because it is more easily damaged with the tapping block. In general, you just have to be more careful with the boards. Which, in general, would not have been a problem for me.
However, we installed this floor as the first project I really worked on after I almost died in December 2016. My mom, my step-dad and I headed over there with all of the best intentions in March 2017. I had already started back to work (working from home) and although I had a temporary colostomy bag and I technically was still fighting off the infection that caused my septic shock... I was determined that this house was going to get DONE. I don't know what kind of karma helped me that day, but their friend (Paul Bunyan - who helped take the step out of the laundry room during the demo) stopped by to help us out. And I confidently can say that we wouldn't have finished without him. Floor work is bad on the back and the knees so it is something that my mom and step-dad cannot easily help with. I thought I was up to par to just do this shit. I was very wrong. In retrospect, I was a crazy person. That was waaaaaaayyyyy toooooooo big of a project to come back to on DAY 1 of returning from ALMOST DYING.
Have I mentioned I'm a little hard-headed?
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