Keeping It Real

It's easy to stare at pictures of beautiful rooms and swoon over their beauty.

It's easy to look at a design element in someone's home and decide to incorporate it into your own.

It's easy to find inspiration.

It ain't easy livin' in the Land of Inbetween.
You know the place ~ the land you live in while taking what you had and turning it into what you want.

It's scary.  And oh is it messy.

In my effort of keeping it real I give you, my friends, the Fiorucci Land of Inbetween.

This was our front porch while we were laying down the new floors.

Not very welcoming is it?

While putting up the new trim, our front living room and dining room was my painting station.

Just want to curl up on that sofa and share a cup of coffee don't you?

The seemingly endless task of painting cabinet doors took over the living room and dining room.

All available counter space was used for stacking drawers to be painted. 

There were plenty of days where it was difficult to find space to simply make a sandwich.

As we did all the work ourselves, we lived in a state of disarray for 3 solid months. 

There were days it seemed unending. 

There were days I thought I would go crazy. 

There were days the only sanity I found was sipping a glass of red wine while sitting on the corner of the bathtub because it was the only clean room in the house.

The only way to live in the after picture is traveling through the Land of Inbetween.

Just don't park there.

Up next, our beautiful revamped kitchen!



Projects & Pictures

The list of renovations we decided on doing wasn't too long of a list.

But it was a lot of work.

Here is the much simplified version of all I had yet to do once the floors were completed.

Next up, framing in the dry-wall only doorways!

The Birth of New Floors!

After tearing up our old floors we began laying down the new laminate wood flooring.

The first two rows are a tad tricky. 

It isn't until the 3rd and 4th rows do the pieces really begin to feel locked into place and stop moving around.

With just a few rows in place, my excitement was a little, um, over-the-top. 
I'm lucky my family loves me.

Keeping the sub floor free of debris is important and every few rows, I'd fire up the shop vac and suck up anything I could find. 

There may have been a few Nerf bullets inadvertently sucked up.

After starting in the family room, we worked our way into the front entry hall and the coat closet.

The process continues from the front entry hall into the living and dining rooms.

Snap, lock, up, cut, down, snap, lock, up, cut, down.  Repeat 7 million times.

Workin' it from the family room into the kitchen.
All those corners and cabinetry made it, shall we say, interesting.

Moment of honesty :  It is 11:45 pm on News Year's Eve when my husband took this picture.  There is no humanly way possible I could have gotten up the next morning knowing that a tiny section of the house was still left to finish.   I was slightly tired and sore from doing the up-down-cut-snap-lock dance moves and my muscles were a tad unhappy with me.  (Crossfit ain't got nothin' on me!) 
So on News Year's Eve, my family and I are cutting, snapping and locking the final pieces into place.

Hey, I know how to party.

A future project will be painting those oak cabinets white as well as a fun idea I have of bringing a barn look to a very contemporary home. 

Stay tuned!