Here are some realtor walk through pictures of the hall, what it looked like through the years, then the final pictures after we refinished the floor and put up the interest wall.
PICTURES OVER THE YEARS
REFINISHED THE FLOORS, NEW ART, HOW IT LOOKS PRESENTLY:
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
I hate to even make an announcement that we are finally finished, after 8 plus years of work (and lots of breaks in between :-D), because as our luck would have it, something big would break…perhaps a geyser in the yard? Or, a random safe falling from the sky making an obscene hole in the roof (hey, I’ve watched the road runner, it happens!). I also realize (cue shaking the head and wiping tears) that you are never *really* done when it comes to old house upkeep. So, maybe I can say that we are done…for now. Will that suffice?
I’ve had a lot of requests for updated pictures and more in depth before/after. In preparation for our appraisal tomorrow, I have cleaned the house and fixed quite a few cosmetic bo-bo’s (I am sure you will find quite a few more I didn’t fix), so I thought it a perfect time to take some 360 videos. Are you game? I will do some before/after photo blogs when I get around to it later this summer.
I only videoed the master bedroom, hall, living areas and kitchen. I’m not brave enough to show the kids’ rooms and who wants to see bathrooms? Coming up tomorrow will be porch and exterior tours. I thought it was fun (and a whole lot easier than taking pictures!) and I can also use it for insurance purposes should that Acme safe ever fall out the sky.
If you are new and would like to see some before pictures, you can search for “realtor walk through”, click on the name of the particular room you want to view in the cloud tag, or click on “before and after”. That should get you some really old photos to look at and compare how far we have come. Here is a post I did right after we updated our major systems (roof, plumbing, paint, mostly exterior projects).
I ordered the videos so that if you watch them in the order I posted them, you will feel that you are walking with me, or at least can make sense of the floor plan. Here you are! Tell me what you think!
PS: Note to all the perfectionists: ignore those cosmetic blemishes.
Note to old house purists: yes, I know I don’t have velvet curtains and Victorian tchotchkes. “Museum style” has never really been my thing.
Note to people who want paint colors: I will publish all paint colors in a future blog post when I do the final before/after pairings.
Did I cover it all? Leave a comment if not 🙂
Master Bedroom:
Small weird hall and the back of the Great Hall:
Front of the Great Hall, study, living room and dining room:
Kitchen:
I was flipping pictures and found some from when I put up the interest pieces on the hall wall. For quite some time I have gathered pictures and ideas on what I wanted to do with the wall once everything was painted. In between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we completely finished sanding and painting the wainscot and refinished the floors. My hall wall was ready!!!
Here are a couple of my inspiration pictures:
Here is what I scrounged the shed and attic and found:
I laid it all out on a quilt in the hall to see how I wanted to arrange it all. I disliked the different colors and decided to use some Martha Stewart metallic paints to unify them. I also bought some black silk ribbon to hang some of the frames and painted some clothes pins with acrylic paint to match.
After laying it out and measuring the wall, I realized that I did not have near enough items to cover the wall. So, back up to the attic for a couple black shelves and a couple other misc. items. I come back and find my daughter like this. She told me that she was “framed!”. It made giggle…
More items……more paint………more arranging………..and here it is:
I am looking for a small flat sign that says “FAMILY” to go in the top right ornate frame. I may either make or order a decal. I haven’t gotten that far yet. The above picture was taken right after i got it all on the wall late November (I believe) and below is a picture I took today. I need to fill in the empty picture frame. I really like the shelves. I have moved things around according to season and according to what I want to look at. Overall, I was pleased with it. You will notice that I did not repaint the pew. I think the color has grown on me. Most of the frames I bought from garage sales or goodwill. The black shelves I had in the study, but when we added the bathroom, they came down and I had nowhere to put them…until now. Thanks for stopping by!
So the poly is dry and I painted the trim. Besides a couple touch up paint spots, I am almost ready to move the furniture back in and hang our family pictures. To be continued….
Today, I was able to finally finish putting poly on the back part of the hall. I did not take any pics. It looks just like the ones a couple posts down. When it is all dry and I move my furniture back in, I will take pics of the final project. I want to install my pew and picture rail first.
Any-who…in between drying times, I caulked the front hall wainscot to ready it for paint. I also pulled out quite a few misc. boards for holiday and other projects. Here is my line up:
A couple of them I’m turning in to holiday decor for the porch. I distress painted them and I’m going to put JOY and NOEL in red letters on them. I will lean them on the front porch.
One of the other smoother boards I am going to make into an oversized chalkboard. Kinda like this one I saw, but much larger.
I also took some of the old 100 year old wall boards (that were taken down in order to add our bathroom) and made a low hanging coat/book sack rack for the kids. The top piece is a leftover piece of baseboard painted with chalkboard spray paint from Lowes. I will probably write on it too. The knobs were some ugly brass ones I took off of my night stands when I painted them many moons back. I painted them with spray paint leftover from some project or other. The coat hooks are from Target and the chalkboards are from Hobby Lobby.
Steven painstakingly primed the new back porch rail he built. It took him allll day just to prime them….ick. I also pulled up all the horrifically ugly floor registers and cleaned, rust primed and painted them.
Overall, it was a very productive day and I’m pleased with what we accomplished.
Thanks for stopping by…or sticking with us! It’s been a long road, hasn’t it?
We decided a couple days ago to tackle the floors in our massive hall. After a trip to two home improvement stores plus a tool store, I finally got underway about 1 pm. I really had some ambitious plans today. It didn’t help that the stain color we did the rest of the house in was discontinued…along with the brand of polyurethane that I love. Argh! Lots of reading cans, looking at color samples and deliberating later, I came home with some stuff I think will match pretty well.
Here are the pics from the day. I’ll finish staining the other side tomorrow and maybe poly Monday or Tuesday.
Cleaned all the stuff out the hall.
Sanded with a high grit, down to a low grit.
Cleaned all the powdery dust. This is the most annoying part. I have to sweep several times, mop, tack cloths, the whole nine yards.
All clean
Starting the stain…more tomorrow. Time to eat!
PS: Right after this pic, I told fuzzy to get off my floor!
Perpetual Renovator 