renovation :: part 1

not long ago i mentioned that i needed some help with some flooring ideas. well, the project is now complete! we've been ripping out carpet and other random floor coverings for the last couple months. last monday the floor guys came out to start work on the refinishing of our wood floors. here are some before and after shots! 

this is our front entry with the staircase leading to our second floor. the top two are the before pictures with the carpet still intact. the second two are what the maple floors looked like under the carpet, and the last two are what they looked like after being refinished.

here are the same photos for our living room. please pardon the messy before photos. we were trying to get ready to rip out the carpet and stuff was everywhere! i only have one (viewable) photo of what the wood floors looked like under the carpet. then, the final product. it's so amazing what a huge floor sander and a little poly can do! i can't wait to move our stuff back in! (which will be happening slowly over the next couple weeks. i want to do a little rearranging, decorating since the rooms are all empty.)

and here's the room i was asking for help with. it's our sunroom. because it only had soft wood, and not maple like the other areas, i thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try some paint! i had always wanted to paint a wood floor, and here was my chance. i posted a pattern i liked here. while i really liked the pattern, there was just something i wasn't sold on. i couldn't put my finger on it. then, one day while searching flickr for some more painted wood floor inspiration, i came across a photo which had rough old worn wood floors with HUGE patterns spread out over it. we're talking like 4 feet in diameter each! there was my answer. while our room isn't big enough to support 4 foot designs, i blew the pattern up to about 24" in diameter each. i laid it all out in illustrator to see how it looked and the floor was born! it took me the weekend to do the pattern, but we're both really happy with it. we chose to only do one coat on the white so that it was a little more "rustic" (for lack of a better word). we're going to leave it unfinished for awhile so it can get some good old wear and tear on the patterns and then when it's worn to a point we like, we're going to seal it. i should mention that including the felt paper that had to be scraped off the floor, there were 5 layers of flooring in this sunroom! oy!

now that we're done with that we're going to be moving onto the other side of our first floor which includes the dining room (soon to be family room), kitchen, and back hallway. exciting times!