Living Room Redo Part II….

The color of the room seemed the least of our worries as we had so many other things to contend with as it turns out. Our builder, David, who is also a friend of ours, had some leftover bamboo flooring from another job. We did not know a thing about bamboo so we started researching it. Without going into all the minor details of our web hours spent and phone calls made regarding this floor, I will just cut to the chase. This is what we learned.

   If you buy Bamboo flooring from Lowe’s or Home Depot or other said places,  only a fraction of the wood is bamboo. The top layer is bamboo and the rest is something else. Why is that important to know? Because with that type of Bamboo, you can maybe only sand it once if need be! Our builder purchased his at Lumber Liquidators and it is solid Bamboo. This means it could be finished as many as three times….we were told. That was important to us and we liked the idea that it is a green product. No trees had to be chopped down to get this wood. The wood is usually 7 years old before it is processed. It came on the market in the early 90’s with limited options. Now there are many types and the flooring we ended up with is called Natural bamboo. It is supposed to be the hardest of the selections and as hard as oak. It is light in color so it took us by surprise at first but now we love it. Here are some photos…..

This was our first day of floor laying. It comes already pre-finished in the package and it’s really quite beautiful. Each box lot of wood has a slightly different tone to it. We asked David if he would stagger the boards to make it look more interesting. See the bamboo nodes in the wood? I love that! This is the finishing, of the closet floor and a box of Morningstar flooring from Lumber Liquidators. Not an inexpensive floor…about 70.00 a box and we used 7. Actually we were 5 boards short after using 6 boxes!! Here’s the photo…. Can you believe that? My hubby went to LL and asked if they ever get damaged boxes of flooring? The first guy says NO NEVER. The second guy that walked in says NO. The third guy that walked in says….Oh YES….and we have one right over here….cost to us….about 35.00 rather than the standard 70.00!! Hey….we needed 5 boards! This air compressor was soooo loud! The table saw was not quite so loud but Obie hated both of them with a passion! An underlayment of a special paper went down under the bamboo to prevent moisture. Here is one of my favorite photos during the construction. I haven’t seen a floor shine like this in my house since the 80’s!! This was so exciting. Next, we went baseboard shopping. We chose this taller one after much consideration at Lowe’s and Home Depot. It came pre-primed which was wonderful! We painted it Icicle to match the trim on the windows. 

This is the new media cove (old closet), primed, painted, floor installed, tech box recessed, ,most of the outlets are set and baseboards put in……more tomorrow…….I hope you all don’t think less of me for living with such a terrible looking living room for so long.:) We tried to remain grateful throughout this process as renovating can upset your whole household and cause a lot of stress. God is good. He provided for us in every way….every step of the way.

The Living Room Redo……

 

   Well I thought my busy days were behind me but alas I seem to be just as busy as when we were under construction! I actually have a couple of hours this afternoon before I have to head out somewhere so I thought I would begin to show you the before pictures of our old 1983 built living room we renovated. It had an old couch, chair, and hassock that was falling apart. The original 1983 rust colored carpet was still there and we had the oddest looking tv stand with a tv on top of it because it would not fit inside of it! Well….just take a gander….

   In this photo you can see all the furniture and the rug and our old computer desk. We had already taken out a table that was in that empty corner and the overhead wobbly fan. This next photo is our ugly and odd tv stand. That’s it! This was our high tech entertainment center! It all seems pretty strange now but it seemed to work for us at the time! This room was once a bedroom made into a tiny living room. We live in a small Cape Cod home and we are revamping the house room by room as we can afford it. This was the closet in the room that we made into a media cove. We had already taken off the door…..but see that lush rust colored carpet! Oh my freaking God…why did it take us so long!! There was a square of sheetrock on the ceiling that was fixed years ago….well partially fixed! Here’s the story… My husband was working on one of the bedrooms upstairs that had no floor. He stepped through the insulation and his foot came right through the living room ceiling! This is how it looked for the last few years, once it was partially fixed! No mud and no taping….just like this and I guess we ignored it? Can you imagine?

   Here are more photos of the ugliness….

     We were discussing getting a new lamp because our old brass one had just died and this little green one was a spare. The table between the ugly chair and ugly couch, was made by my husband I think when he was a teenager! Notice the ugly pillows too that went to the dump with the furniture!

   The carpet had to come out and the padding, which is what you see here. Once the padding came up, we discovered that the underlayment was particle board and it was falling apart. That had to go.

   The closet had to be cut wider and taller with a special saw. The shelf and the hardware came out.

   Inside the closet on the left hand side is a metal box. A few years ago, my husband had this idea. He wanted the entire house wired for cable, internet and phones. This is the brains of it all. Every room in my house including the basement, has one or more outlets to include all three of the above mentioned. This box was the source of much conversation. Do we leave it the way it is and just hide the wires? Do we build a sheetrock frame around it with a small shelf on top to hold the router that was in that closet on the above shelf? If we do that, do we need to build another shelf opposite that on the other wall to match it? On and on we went with ideas until my husband decided it was a better idea to sink it into the wall and feed the wires down through the wall to an outlet that he and the builder had to create. See that outlet to the right with wires hanging out? That came out right along with that wall. That was our closet light switch. The closet was a big project in itself. Here it is with the walls cut out on the sides and before the carpet came out. You can see where the walls were by the cutouts on the floor. This is a photo of the top after being cut out and before sheetrock. This is the beginning of sheetrock and before priming the walls. New outlet to the left for a dimmer switch which will go to a set of rail lights above. An outlet in the bottom back for the entertainment center. Bottom left inside the closet is an outlet opening with a string. Above is the tech box recessed into the wall….easier said than done! The string is attached to all the wires that need to be fished down to that outlet….that took some doing….and as you can probably see….new plywood flooring. Here’s a look inside the brain box. Pretty techie looking isn’t it? I will tell you later what our plans are for dressing that up. The priming begins…..

 Choosing a color was one of the absolute hardest decisions to make for us. I looked at more paint chips than I care to mention and magazines and watched those home makeover shows!! Then, one day, I was at a friends house. They had hired a decorator for 400.00 to come in to their home and make decisions for them. This was the color she chose and I loved it. It’s called Harbour Town by Sherwin Williams. It’s a light sage and it looks totally different during the day than it does at night, but that’s ok….it’s done, and it didn’t cost me 400.00 to find it. I thanked my friend for paying for it and giving me the name of it!! The trim on the windows was called icicle and we did that in a semi-gloss. The walls we did in an eggshell. The wood around the inside of the windows had to stay and I was not thrilled about that because it makes it look country. My whole house is country. I am sick of it and am trying to go more traditional. That’s ok because my curtains cover that up.

   That’s a sneak peak and I will add more tomorrow. I have many more things to share with you that are happening right now but not enough time!! Arggggg See you tomorrow………

 

Fall Harvest Is Bountiful…..

 

   I thought I would share some more photos of my garden. I absolutely love watching those veggies and flowers grow every year! This year was one of my most challenging though. The Japanese Beetles attacked my pole beans like crazy! Every day I must have picked off 30 to 40 and scooped them into a cup with some bleach and water. They never once ate any of the beans, but didn’t they love the Bean leaves! Here are some photos of how crazy the plants grew even so.

   We had a good supply of cucumbers and squash throughout the summer. What a wonderful feeling it is to just step out to the garden for a fresh veggie to add to a salad or dinner. I love that.

   I tried growing some Japanese long cukes this year and they did not do well. The above photo is a regular pickling one….they were great and very sweet. The Japanese ones are supposed to be straight and about 1” in diameter. Instead, they curled up and were fat on one end and skinny on the other. They also had strong amounts of prickles all over that were like needles! I wish I had taken some pics of that but I didn’t.

 

   We all love Butternut squash and it was plentiful this year! I roasted it with other garden veggies, garlic, and oil, and it was fantastic….so sweet and buttery tasting!

   My girlfriend Joyce gave me some Zucchini and yellow crookneck plants. I probably would not have grown them if she had not. Look at the size of the leaves next to my hand! The plant looked like something from the tropics! It was one of my best producers! I gave away a LOT of zucchini and yellow squash!

   Not until it was too late, did I realize that I had only planted little baby pumpkins! I guess the living room work got me distracted….or maybe it was the frost we had after my first planting! Oh…forgot to tell you about that…my first planting was killed by an unusual frost and I had to buy all new plants and replant! Although these baby jacks were all I had, they ended up being so plentiful! I must have had 30 to 40 at least!

   Cute little buggers….and more gourds…

   My kids ended up harvesting my rainbow carrots! I have never been so excited about seeing a vegetable come out of the ground! You never know what color or shape you are going to get. Here are a few pics of them…

   You cannot really see the colors in these 2 photos above but you should be able to see that in the next one. See above…we got some real characters in there! So cool!

   That’s it for today….I wanted to let you all know how much I have enjoyed viewing your garden entries too! It is one of my favorite things to view on blogs. More tomorrow hopefully! :)

FINALLY!!! I AM BACK BLOGGING!! Yipeeeee

Hello every0ne! I sure have missed being here soooo much! I hope you have not forgotten me! My last post was mid July when we were starting our living room project. We thought it would only take us one month. That one month stretched into two and then three. We had many bumps along the road and many blessings. Every time something strange or unforeseen occurred, God stepped in with a little bonus for us. It was sometimes crazy and absolutely exhausting to have our house upside down. All for a tiny little living room! As soon as I get all the pictures into a slide show I will share with you all what we did. The hardest part of it all were the decisions! DECISIONS…DECISIONS…DECISIONS! What color paint and what type of flooring and furniture and curtains and new tv and computer table and end table and lighting and on and on! We used Google a lot! We spent so many hours traveling to some of the local stores in Portland and South Portland, they started to recognize us when we walked through the door! We bought a couch, love seat and recliner and the couch would not fit through the living room door. When the guy started asking us if our windows come out, we said No!…take the couch back! The love seat eventually went back as it just didn’t work and we now have two recliners and another chair. We took two sets of curtains back after “trying them on” our windows. Finally a set we liked….off white of course! You can’t go wrong with that! I really needed to hire one of you as a designer because it was brutal to make these choices.

So….it has been a long summer and I have many pictures to share with you and here it is fall already. I’ve missed so much. My garden produced some awesome veggies and flowers but I was hit for the first time with tomato blight and had to destroy all my tomato plants. They had to be bagged up and taken to the dump so as not to infect other plants in the tomato family. Weird huh? Many farmers in Maine lost their entire crops to this! I did get some great produce though. We had a harvest dinner a couple of Sunday’s ago and my family came and took what they wanted from the garden. I have pictures!! Then of course there was the Port Hole of 2009. My brother and nephews came home from Nashville, and performed for us all, at Port Hole in Portland, Maine. It was a blast, and I will write about that soon too. For today, I just wanted to check in and claim my seat in blogging once again. I have already gone on too long. I wanted to thank my faithful bloggie friends out there……you know who you are! You are all wonderful and I so enjoyed being able to visit you. I am so thrilled to be back on my regular computer!! The laptop I was using was the biggest pain in the *** because the words kept jumping all over hell’s creation! Oh well….at least I had one to use.

I will leave you with a couple photos of my crazy gourds from this year. God I love growing gourds….they are so neat….you never know what you will get when you plant a mixture packet of them!

These turned completely yellow but if picked early, will be greenish yellow with these bumps all over that look like warts….very cool.

See the one above on the bottom….those look like little pumpkins and are just adorable for decorating. I ended up with over 30 baby pumpkins and a ton of butternut squash and rainbow carrots, zucchini, green beans, cukes, summer squash, and more. As soon as I download the photos from my camera I will post them to share with you. I was quite impressed with Dawn’s garden and all the canning she did! Kathleen did quite a bit too! I never got to that this year but did freeze some veggies…..I have more to do. Ok….I am….glad to be back and see you all, hopefully soon with more photos!!

Port Hole 2009…..my nephew Adam playing lead guitar.