Living Room & Dining Room
Can you believe that we started updating our floors almost 6 months ago!? While we finished the floors in early January, sadly, the living room sat empty without any baseboards until last weekend. Here is what the room looked like right after we finished installing the floors.

The floors looked greeaat (imagine Tony the Tiger saying that) and, in my mind, the rooms were basically done. I knew we had a couple of weeks of work left. But the seriously cold winters of the Midwest really slowed things down. We planned on installing new trim, so my husband needed to cut each piece in the garage. As you can imagine, that didn’t sound like a very appealing job in the middle of winter. As any responsible couple would do, we ignored the project until the weather improved. (To be fair, we had a few warm weekends between when we finished and last weekend, but it didn’t seem like a priority.)
After just a couple of hours of work, the living room baseboards were installed on Sunday. Installing baseboards is pretty easy, but it takes time and patience to get it right. I learned a ton about different types of joints – butt joints, scarf joints and coping corner joints. I’m not an expert, but I found this, this and this helpful when learning about installing trim. Now that they are installed, its tempting to move everything back into the room, but the finishing work (filling holes multiple times, sanding, caulking and painting) needs patience. My plan is to work on this a little bit every day for the next week and finally re-install the living room furniture next weekend (hopefully!!!!)

That also means that I need to finalize the updates I was planning for this room, which are minor. I plan on replacing the pillow covers (already ordered!), updating the blinds to a natural fiber and possibly changing up the console table.
The dining room is, uh, going a little slower. I am hoping that next weekend we’ll start installing the board and batten (again weather really delayed us). Fingers crossed this happens soon, because I am already…..
Planning for the Next Project
You know when there is a lull in another project, so to keep yourself busy you start planning the next one? Well, beyond the living room, dining room and bedroom, I have started planning ANOTHER room. I don’t want to go into too many details, but we’ve started getting wallpaper samples and I am VERY excited. Want to guess what room I planning?

We’re going to complete this secret room during the One Room Challenge (starts May 6th). The project is going to include NEW FLOORS! WALLPAPER! CABINETS! I am slightly worried about getting all the supplies in time, so I am trying to finalize the design decisions within the next couple of weeks and order the big stuff by April 1st.
Better get back to work. 🙂
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