Hello. It has been a long time since I posted last. I’ve been busy trying to wrap up my many projects and starting some more! Last week I decided it was time to get off my butt and get moving. In other words: I was finally motivated.

The first thing I did was putty the wood work in the bathroom with some help from Shane. From there I stained and applied the first coat of poly. It looks amazing. Crazy how having it all stained can make such a big difference.

Next I started sanding the hallway and the newel post. I’ve got some more to do, but I am making progress. I hope to have this done in the next two weeks.

The new project I started was Brendan’s room. I called our painter, Andy from Exquisite Painting, to come work on Brendan’s room at the end of July. He will be fixing a few of the major cracks in the plaster, skim coating the walls and doing an orange peel, and then painting. For paint I have a light blue that will go on all of the walls except the window wall. On that side it will be a light tan that will also go up on to the ceiling. My mother-in-law suggested that since I have navy curtain panels on the window.

With Andy coming to paint I realized I needed to have the top of the woodwork stripped and stained before he comes. I made the mistake in our hallway of doing this after he had painted and it made such a mess. Eventually I’ll have to go back and touch up the paint and have Andy edge it on the woodwork so we have a straight line. I am rather proud of myself, because in two days time I have heat gunned the tops and sanded them. They are ready to be stained, but I am going to wait until a few days before he comes to finish it. The reason for that is, because I have put myself on a deadline for all of the woodwork! My goal is to have all of Brendan’s woodwork sanded and ready to be stained in two weeks. If Andy is behind schedule and can’t start until the beginning of August I will extend my deadline to 3 weeks. Tomorrow my plan is to strip and sand the window.

Now today after talking with my mother-in-law I went ahead and ripped out the carpet in Brendan’s room. I debated about doing this, but it was stained with urine from the previous owners dogs (nasty) and in order to finish the wood work it had to come out as I couldn’t get to the bottom of the baseboard. Underneath the carpet is linoleum and then tar on top of the wood floors. Eventually we will have to scrape and heat gun it off and redo the floors like we did in the bathroom. This linoleum is different than the stuff in there and hopefully will be easier to remove.

Before I end this I’d like to thank every one who gave me some encouragement when I was feeling overwhelmed with every thing! Also, thanks to Liz for the rug we won!