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There’s one thing that I’m beginning to dislike about changing my house and that is painting the trim! Agggh. All of the house had almond (or I as I like to call it, yellow) trim and doors here there and everywhere. I probably would have left it but for some reason I just couldn’t deal with the yellow with white furniture I plan on having.

So far I’ve painted 3 bedrooms, and the living room’s trim as well as a couple doors. Now I must repaint the bedroom’s trim since once you remove the carpet you have the rest of the trim exposed. If I would’ve waited I wouldn’t have to do things twice, but this was a good lesson learned!

Should you use EcoProcote High-Traffic product I would suggest putting it down with something like a squeegee. We may go back over with a 3rd coat in the future with one to make it super smooth.

Now I shall go paint trim until I’m blue in the face!

I’ve been so sick of sleeping in the living room so I decided to split up the work and finish the bedroom first. Let’s start where we left off…..

I almost forgot to take a picture which is why you see the gloss coat in the back, but here’s the bedroom with it’s 2nd coat of stain. (I wanted it dark and lovely.)

Applying the primer which can be the final top coat however I wanted *extra* gloss so there will be 2 more coats of a different product after this. Note: I’m quite sure I laid this down a bit too thick, but making my roller do a thin layer was not easy.

Pizza break! Isn’t that exposed light switch awesome?!

30 minutes after I laid down the first coat… (dries in 6 hours)

I’m entirely thrilled with how it’s turned out so far and I cannot wait to put on the other polyurethane-like coats tomorrow. It’s starting to come together!

Here’s an update on how my stain process is going. Originally we used “staining pads” but I changed when I started doing the bedroom and used a little faux paint pad that I got from Jo-Ann’s not realizing that it would change the pattern a lot! Once I had started it I figured I liked it so I just kept going. This is how it’s turned out so far…

I cannot wait until my bed is back in here! And new faceplate covers? Luxury awaits!

A little detail.. my socks definitely add to this shot.

I still have the studio to finish staining, and that will hopefully be done tomorrow. The biggest problem with me doing it this way is it’s taking me forever! So far it’s been about 8 hours with me sitting on the floor staining, taking my sweet time and making it pretty.

So now I will show you how to paint a faux Christmas tree, great for being green and for those who have no place to put a tree because their home is entirely upside down! Okay I’m just kidding, but this is our official tree this year. Haha…

We really did want to have a tree and “do it up right” with our first year in the house, but it just wasn’t happening. It probably wasn’t a good idea to start the floors in November, since I should have known they wouldn’t be finished in time.

As a side note this is my wet erase board that is from my office, that I *love*. I didn’t want the plastic looking white dry erase board. There is actually fabric in the frame and I’ll go into detail of how nice it looks later on.

My products have arrived to stain the floor!

So the last time I picked up two different colors and combined them was most likely during a finger painting session in kindergarten, which is exactly why this scared me a little. I was a little nervous at first on how I was going to obtain my “perfect dream color” between the light brown and black. The color I wanted was a warm dark chocolate color, not realizing (before the boyfriend mentioned it) that it would contain RED! What?! I should have known that! All in all, I did find a color I loved so it all worked out.

All concrete is different, including ours being quite different in just the 2 rooms. Depending on your original concrete color will make the product lighter, darker, or different patterns. The light brown is the Espresso, the other 2 are something around 4 parts espresso 1 part black. Note: None of these samples are the color I used.

The “test room” being the closet, here it is! (Unfinished, mind you.) The color ended up being 7 parts brown and 1 part black. We didn’t quite prepare this room as well as we should have, the flaws blend in quite well though.

A pretty shot of preparing the studio floors. Oh and is that a small peek at what I painted the walls? I think it is!

I will be finishing the floors sometime within the next 7 days. (That’s the plan, anyway!)

So I did run into one small problem, the damage in front of our sliding glass doors. We figure that the floor is so crumbled and cracked because of our old style sliding glass doors which are not 100% weatherproof.

The other issue is the browny yellowish glue is not coming up. I’ve also tried a test patch and we are not going to be able to stain it. Phooey.

Here’s a couple ideas we’ve tossed around on how to fix this..
1. Just repair and paint over it. We could line just the doorways with a dark brown paint that is similar to the finished stain color.
2. Wood trim anyone? Saw down a 2″ trim piece to fit snug in the doorway, covering up the whole mess.

Anything to add to that list? Do you think one would be better over the other? If we cannot decide, we might just try both!

Turning the great room into my studio. This has been a planned and replanned room for months. First, I was going to lay hardwood floors, now I’m staining the concrete. That was a large jump wasn’t it? Now why am I staining the concrete instead of laying down some beautiful hardwood? I give you…

Hardwood Vs Staining Concrete
1. Stained concrete is easier to maintain, I wouldn’t have to worry about ruining my floor.
2. Staining concrete runs about $400-$800 DIY project. I’m doing about 750 sq ft. The chocolate brown bamboo hardwood quote was around $8,000 installed. (I wouldn’t chance installing such an expensive floor myself.) Who doesn’t love those numbers?
3. The wood I planned on purchasing claimed to be “environment friendly” but I’m sure using what I already have is more green no matter what.
4. Stained concrete is beautiful and modern. Two things I love.

The “maybe it’s not such a good idea” thoughts…
1. Concrete may be colder than wood, but not necessarily any different than tile.
2. If you drop something on concrete such as a glass, it’s a goner.

What if we waste $600 on all the materials, work, and then hate our stained concrete floors?! Well, we’ll deal with it until we get hardwood floors to cover it up!

The bottom line:
The carpet had to go. Immediately.

We learned that removing this much carpet really stinks, literately for us since we have pets. And you really wonder what you’re breathing when you look under old carpet, ick! It took us hours but we managed to roll up all the old carpet, padding, and scheduled the dump to pick it up. I would’ve offered someone to reuse it, but it was in bad shape.

Underneath… even a little mold by the kitchen doorway. After you remove the carpet you will have dust floating around, a shop vac is nice for cleaning up all the dust on the floor and in the air.

The studio is connected to our master bedroom, so it’s also getting new floors. Where did our new huge bed go? Why we’re sleeping in the living room for now, haha.

Finally carpet free, but tons of work to come.

Here’s a couple more shots of my dining area to give you an idea of the new eating area. Thankfully we’ll probably never need more than 4 seats.

Here’s the chairs before and after. The chairs were $30 from craigslist, and $28 and a staple gun later they were prettier and even more comfortable. I really wanted a nice fabric that had a little sheen to it.

For what it cost me I’ll never complain, and I actually really love my chairs. I also love my dining table considering I spent much less for it than I originally had planned.