a small change and something for Mandi

Those of you that follow will remember my recently redone entryway.  Here is a picture to refresh your memory:

Do you see the little hooks on it?  There are three of them.  They came in kind of a nickel color and I painted them white...but I didn't really love them.  They are kind of plain.  So, I changed them.

Sundance Catalog had these chalkboard ones on clearance.

They're a little bit industrial, a little vintage, a little gym lockerish.

I think they look a lot better than the old ones.  Cute.

...and now something for Mandi:  Mandi at Tidbits from the Tremaynes wanted to see close up pictures of my newly painted concrete floors in the sunroom.  So this is for her.  Now, remember that I didn't roll the paint on for a uniform finish.  I like to swirl it around for a visual effect, sort of like a loft look.  The paint looks like a different color in the pictures because of lighting but in real life, it is the color of picture number one.  So, Mandi, here is a close up:

Please disregard the unattached quarter round molding we haven't finished yet.

You can see the finish but the color is off in this picture. (too much sun)

At the top of this picture, you can barely see the repaired floor from where we removed the fireplace tile and painted.  Blends in pretty well, huh?

If you use a roller, you'll have even, solid coverage if you prefer that.  There you go, Mandi.

the good, the bad and the ugly

I'm going to embarrass myself today. Hopefully, I'll redeem myself in a few weeks. I am starting on my sunroom makeover. It's going to be quite a project as far as labor is involved but the cost will be next to nothing because I'm doing it myself with stuff I already have. So, let's begin.  Just a warning...the photos in this post have not been re-touched, edited, airbrushed or enhanced.  I'll just let you see it as it is.

The Good

Let's start with the good.  The sunroom is going to become my project room.  It is a beautiful room with two walls of windows, a fireplace and french doors.  It's screaming with potential. 

 six huge windows

lovely french doors with antique glass knobs

pretty little fireplace and mantel

even has a little chandelier (although it needs some tweaking)

More Good

The new sunroom/project room will have some cool things it in like these:

The Bad

Before I can make it pretty, I've got to fix the bad.  The sunroom had nasty carpet in it.  It came that way.  So, first I will have to redo the floors.  I'm going to continue the painted concrete floors into the sunroom and I'll probably show my version of a tutorial on that later.  Right now, they look bad.

The Ugly

Since we've been working on the dining room, the entry and the den, we've had to move stuff around.  When we didn't know where to put something, we just put it in the sunroom.  We would say "let's just put it in the sunroom for now and we'll decide about it later."  After awhile, the sunroom just became a storage area and it was ugly.  I wish I could say I forgot to take pictures of it in it's before stage but I went ahead and took them.  So, here's the ugly before (and please tell me you all have an embarrassing spot in your home like this too.  Don't you have a spot where you just put your junk and close the door and hope nobody sees it?  Is every room as perfect as it appears on our blogs?  Now you know mine it isn't.  Please tell me yours isn't too so I can feel better.)

 

By embarrassing myself by showing this, I am now motivated to make it pretty.  So, that's what I'm working on the next few weeks.  I'll clean, paint, recover, stain, re-arrange, redo, create, re-purpose and whatever else to make this my new project room.  Guess what, I am not linking this post to any party, anywhere.  Nope, I don't want to share this with thousands of people.  I will post updates as I go along. Also, Jennie's been redoing her master bath and I have been nagging her to get me pictures.  She's done some great things in that bath so hopefully she'll get me some pictures to post!

concrete floors

In some recent posts, many of you apparently noticed my floors.  I've received quite a few comments and emails asking about my floors.  My most recent post showed you an example of my floors.

Here's another view of the floors.

Throughout most of our downstairs, we have painted concrete floors. These floors are one of my favorite things in the house.  In the picture above, you see the first entry area has hardwood and originally most everything else was carpeted.  I hate carpet.  When you have boys and dogs, the carpet gets yucky really fast.  We considered just putting hardwood floors everywhere but 1) that is expensive! and 2) I have two big chocolate labs whose ginormous claws scratch hardwood floors so that they just aren't that pretty.  Since hardwood is expensive or labor-intensive to refinish, we decided to just pull up all the carpet and paint the floors.  I would love to pull up that hardwood and do the same.  (hopefully that will be a future project).  We used concrete floor paint in a dark brown and painted it on.  We didn't want a perfect floor because we wanted a bit of character.

After applying the paint, we finished with a couple of coats of poly sealer.  It held up really well for a couple of years and then it started to show wear.  I actually liked some of the wear because I didn't want it to look so new.  I wanted it to look aged, time-worn.

But then, this happened:

It didn't happen everywhere.  It happened mostly by the back door and by the stairs where these two little darlings jump, run and slide the most.

Ballou (she's not usually this calm at the back door)

Bella (yep, she's sleeping on top of a coffee table up in the TV room.  My husband thinks this is so cute.  I have other opinions.  This dog is a bit wierd different anyway. See those ginormous nails she has?)

But guess what?  If the floor chips or wears too much for your taste, you just repaint.  It's so much easier and cheaper than refinishing floors.

Probably if we had added more coats of poly or prepped like the directions said to, it would have lasted a bit longer. I believe stain would have lasted longer as well.  It doesn't matter to us.  We love the concrete floors.  If something spills, who cares?  It just wipes up.  You can't hurt this floor.  Here's an unexpected bonus: Our neighbors recently had huge foundation issues.  They told us about huge cracks in their concrete slab foundation.  Our first thought was, "oh my goodness, I wonder if we have problems with our foundation?"  Oh wait, we see our foundation everyday.  It's our floor.  Other than the original tiny hairline cracks and imperfections it started with (which I like), it's doing just fine.

The worst part of doing these floors was adding all of the trim moulding since removing the carpet left a gap between our baseboards and the floor.  That was a bit of a pain for my husband but it all looks great.  We haven't pulled up the carpet in the sunroom yet.  When I begin to redo that room this summer, we will get rid of the carpet and paint the floors the same color.  Hopefully, I'll get to show you a tutorial when it's done. 

Sorry for some of the bad photos in this post.  I wasn't planning on posting about my floors but so many of you had asked.  Today is a cloudy day and dark floors don't photograph well in a dark day so I had to use photos I already had.

I'm linking up to my favorite blog parties in my list above and down on the right