Gettin' It Done in the Bedroom

Over the past couple weeks, Mr. W and I have been getting busy in the bedroom like you wouldn't believe. I know that sounds dirty. And it has been dirty. In fact, I've had paint and dust on my body just about every day...

Half of the bedroom looks pretty good. The other half looks like this.

It started when we finished the floor ten days ago. It was glorious—we had it professionally sanded, then Mr. W meticulously stained it and applied three coats of polyurethane.

And then the cat walked through it and left about 50 paw prints in the wet poly.

That may have been one of my least favorite things to tell Mr. W ever in our relationship. I thought for sure the cat would end up in the microwave. When I asked him whether the poly was toxic—because I was worried about the cat's feet—he said bluntly, "I don't care." He and Zöe have since made up...

It's funny how this whole renovation thing works. It feels like everything takes forever and then you turn some invisible corner and suddenly everything accelerates. It feels like we've accomplished more in the last couple weeks than we have in the last two months.

This is the inspiration for the entire room. A picture our friend Sweet Pete painted a long time ago.

One of the most exciting milestones has been the assembly of the closet.

Since March, Mr. W and I have been coexisting in one tiny closet that's also holding a sizable collection of stuff to sell at a garage sale. To have some breathing room and be able to organize all of our haute, haute couture has been a dream come true.

I pretty much want to lock myself in the closet and just lie on the floor, marveling at its beauty.

We still have a little work to do in there. Mr. W has to install molding along the floor and build some more shelves for me in the corner. But oh even in its unfinished state, it's magical. Stepping inside each morning to put on my grubby renovation outfits feels just like the shopping scene in Pretty Woman.

On top of the closet progress, Mr. W put his mad carpentry skills to work to build a set of shelves in the new entryway of the bedroom. Saturday afternoon while he painted the add-on exterior, I spent a couple hours arranging books and pictures and knickknacks. Heaven. Seriously, if you ever need a bookshelf arranged, call me. I'll come to your house and style it while you sit on the couch drinking lemonade, barking at me about how the color scheme is all wrong and I need to move that one vase to the left two inches.

We really are on the home stretch in the bedroom. Well, except for the fact that Mr. W plans to build us a king-sized platform bed. But that's phase 2. Or maybe phase 63 at the rate all this remodeling nonsense seems to go.

They Don't Call it "Hard"Wood Flooring for Nothing...

On the last episode of OMG This Remodel Is Taking Forever, we had just gotten the outside prepped for stucco and the inside covered in drywall:

Since then, we've made some sweet, sweet progress (smells like tears of joy and extra deodorant, doesn't it?):

After several days of plaster work on the inside—and a thousand pounds of dust on every surface in the house—the room was ready for paint. There may not be any S&M activity taking place in our household (at least none we'll admit to), but we definitely have a 50 Shades of Grey thing going on around here. Living room walls are light grey...kitchen walls are light grey...kitchen countertop and flooring are grey...bathroom tiles and vanity are grey...outside is greyish...Mr. W owns a lot of pairs of grey underwear. You get the picture.

So it seemed only natural for us to go with a soft grey in the bedroom. But we also wanted to do something different with color, so we decided to add a big fat gallery wall accent stripe to the wall our bed will face.

The hope is that it'll have this effect when we hang some of our favorite travel pictures on it: 

Source

Once the paint was on the walls, it was time to take on what became the most arduous task of the entire process (says the girl who did pretty much nothing to help with any of the construction at any point...): Installing the hardwood flooring. If you ever go on Youtube and watch a video of someone installing hardwoods, it looks super easy. Tongue, meet groove, nail, repeat. 

The reality of floor installation was that the nailgun dealie Mr. W bought would more times than not push some wood splinters out, making it impossible to get the tongue tightly in the groove—so he had to slice off the superfluous wood after putting in every nail. And there were approximately a bagillion nails.

What we thought would take about 3 days to install took close to 3 weeks. Needless to say, there was a lot of cursing involved.

But now the floors are all in:

We just have to find some kind soul to come sand them for us. It continues to baffle me how many contractors and craftsmen never return phone calls. It's a wonder they're able to keep their businesses going. Fingers crossed that we can get someone do to it for a reasonable price.

And then we will finally get to move out of the guest room. And not make visitors sleep on mattresses and aerobeds on the floor. And stop overloading every surface with clothes we can't find a place to put. And start working on the bathroom...which currently looks like this:

Wish us luck. We continue to need it every day.