A Little Home Renovation

We were so incredibly blessed with this house we were able to jump in and buy 3 years ago.  It had so much going for it to feel like the perfect home for our family, but even though the price was a steal, it still needed some serious work.  Our original renovation budget went quickly on the big things - new roof, new furnace, major yard projects (like taking out an in ground pool), new fences etc.  We've had to save up and kind of nickel and dime for some of the smaller projects over the years. I've started trying to go room by room in the house for the rooms that still needed work.  When we started out 10 years ago, we had very basic and cheap furniture and I've been looking forward to starting to update some of those pieces.  Earlier this year we worked in the boys room and got it a bit more updated and now it was time for me to get to focus on a part of the house I have been sooo excited to work on!  

The Living Room Floor and Dining Room!  These are the first impression rooms you see when you enter the house.  The bones of the house made it to where these room had real potential with large and a huge vaulted ceiling.  It also had a very outdated sunken living space. The plan was to upgrade dining room furniture and to raise the sunken living room. 

Before: 

I've gotten the reputation of kind of a slave driver when projects are under way, but Peter compliments my "project management"  AFTER the fact.  I tend to joke that Peter goes to his real job to get a break and rest up from the projects he has to do at home. 

Peter reminded me several times that this was a big project and that raising the floor could be challenging.  It became even more challenging when we discovered the walls weren't level but between him and his dad they were able to push forward with a plan we were hopeful would work out!  But no way to know for sure until we started laying the final flooring down. 

The moment of truth was before us. Not only did we have to deal with it being a smidge off but also we had to try and join the flooring of two different sides of the house and hope they would match up perfectly.  This was not the case but with some pushing and shoving and some sanding we got it as good as we could!  

We pushed through the evening and into the late of night to get the floor down! 

But seeing it the next morning made me so happy!  It was beautiful and drastically changed the look of the house! 

The view from the entry:

New Dining Room with New Dining Room Furniture

Dining looking into the Living: 

I am so happy to have this project done. The end result is actually better than I anticipated!  I really wanted it to be done before Christmas and Peter went above and beyond to make sure it was done with plenty of time to spare!  He continues to amaze me with how good he is at these home projects!