herringbone flooring

Some people find winter to be depressing, but I love the atmosphere of the winter months. The hot chocolate, egg nog, soft sweaters, glittery decorations, and holiday records are all on my why-can't-these-things-be-all-year-round list. Also, my love for sheep skins (faux and real) makes more sense when it's cold out. On Sunday I went to the closet to grab a warm jacket and came away with my fox fur coat on. It's that one I'm wearing there on the top right hand side of my blog. Matt bought it at Thrift for $1, but I've never worn it in public before, cause it's a little fluffy. Definitely an acceptable decision, even though people called me a wide range of poofy names. Have you ever worn a fur coat with velvet inside the pockets? Made me feel like a rich kid.

 We've been making little updates here and there, and our home is starting to look more like a real house. We got a $16 rug (craigslist) which (after an intense cleaning) is sitting pretty in one of the upstairs rooms. Look at the blues in that. Yummy. Also, I bought a roll of glitter "wall border" from Wal*Mart for $5 and I love how a little piece of it makes my Grandma's old spaghetti noodle holder a sparkly paintbrush holder. If I could cover the majority of things in gold glitter, believe me, I would. I don't know if Matt would appreciate it though. Speaking of Matt: Let me show you something he finished recently.

This is our downstairs hallway. I showed you the hardwoods in my last post, after I removed the carpet. Underneath we revealed what used to be a furnace grate, but had been filled in with plywood. We knew it was there and decided that, instead of re-flooring the entire down stairs, or trying to match the existing hallway, we would fill it in with something different. Matt has never done any flooring at all, but whipped this out in a couple of hours. It's like a piece of art. Herringbone art. In our hallway. Seriously, he's amazing. Still the living room and kitchen are basically untouched and the bathroom needs work, but I'm so excited about the progress. Here's hoping we'll be able to have a egg nog housewarming party sometime before the chill wears off.

hardwood

The first time I saw our house it was a video of a video. Matt had recorded my parents skype as they walked through the house. A video of a video. Because we bought it before we saw it in person, there have been some surprises. Nothing overwhelming, but some funny little changes. One of the big ones was the hardwood upstairs. Almost the entire floor in one bedroom was covered with a giant, plastic rug (that crumbled when we removed it). We left it down as a drop cloth when we were painting, but mom had looked under it in the video, so we knew it would come up when we were ready. What we didn't know was what was underneath it.

I don't know if you noticed it at first, but do you see that dark border by the wall?

See it now? Everything the rug wasn't covering was made dark (and dirty). Time is funny like that. It makes things old. The rug (which may have been there for the past 70 years) kept the floors underneath just like new. The whole house has dark brown wood under the carpet, but not in this room. Under this (apparently sunproof) rug, the floors were their original color. Here's what they look like after a good scrubbing.

There's still a difference, but I think it's pretty. So now we have both of the upstairs rooms painted and we're ready to move furniture in upstairs! Yes, that means we have a place for guests to sleep (and to continue hoarding our collection of children's toys).

I also pulled up the carpet in the hallway downstairs.

It took an afternoon to pull up all the staples and such, but look how pretty it is!! I love how the hardwood flows seamlessly into the bedrooms. Consider me impressed. We're still so far from being finished, but every step is a weight off our shoulders. We can't wait to start having people over for dinner and using our house to reach out to others!

Have you been working on your house? It seems like a constant project!