Laying the Tile

With the sub-floor installed, the men started tiling!

All of the pictures above were of the tile un-grouted.  The picture below is the floor with gray grout.  

Tomorrow and the next day the stair guys will come to install the stairs.  THEN we'll need to get baseboard up to finish off the room.

I have a hard time remembering what this room used to be (here and here are a few old pictures).
I guess my worries of nothing having a foyer floor are now answered, thanks to Tom and Eric's hard work this past weekend.

Foyer Weekend...Whew

Here's a glimpse into our most recent Friday night...

Eric and I rushed home from work to begin taking up the tile in our foyer, in preparation of laying down a new floor the following day.  Sweet little Charlotte was a great sleeper with the help of ear plugs during our few hours of hammering away.  (And don't worry...I watched her on the monitor, to make sure she didn't eat the ear plugs, until she fell asleep.)

Then, Saturday morning Tom and Madison arrived to help on the foyer.   Here are a few pictures, along with a timeline, of our eventful day.

8:30 am - Tom sees how uneven the floor was with the old tile ripped up.  Shaking his head, like he does when he shares bad news, he tells us the entire sub-floor needs to come up.  This is a HUGE job that we wanted to avoid, so we settled on the fact that we would have a very messy house come time for Charlotte's 1st Birthday party 7 days later.

11:00 am - My husband is amazing, and got the entire sub-floor up within 90 minutes!  Tom helped clean up the mess (hundreds of pounds of tile and concrete), and we're now in business to put down a new sub-floor.  What a pleasant, unexpected surprise and blessing!

What a mess... right about now I was getting nervous.

The house was getting messy, so the ladies took a stroll to the park. Charlotte loves being with her cousin Madison and being outside.  Who would have thought January would have been this kind to us so far?!

11:30 - The men finish cleaning up the mess (sorry to our next door neighbors who can see it stashed away on the side of our house).  Note on the 4th picture we lose our bottom step (Can you feel me getting more anxious as the day goes on?).

2:00 - After a run to the store to rent a truck and purchase the materials to build the new sub-floor, the men begin the process.  First went a layer of 1/2" plywood, followed by 1/2" durock.  

4:00 - What!? Even though we expected to just get to this point this weekend, we're actually ready to begin tiling....I cannot believe it.

We got the majority of tile down today, but have a few cuts to make tomorrow morning, followed by grouting around the tile.  I'll post more pictures tomorrow once I take them, but I was so excited about how productive Tom and Eric were today that I had to share :)

It looks like we'll have a foyer floor for the party next week after all!  Now we're just hoping the staircase company doesn't cancel on us again, and are able to come and fix our step in the next week!

Although we've been at home renovation projects awhile, we love seeing the transformation of rooms after we put in a lot of hard work.  This room in particular has been one we've been patiently waiting to work on, so it's a joy to see the changes happening today!

Good night friends,
Courtney

Tile

This weekend has been one we've planned for for a while!  To kick off the weekend, a package was scheduled to come into the mail today, but they ended up rescheduling for tomorrow morning.  A little anticlimactic, but exciting nonetheless.

Tile for our foyer!

After going back and fourth about whether to tile or put wood down in the foyer, we opted for tile.  It's more durable and easier to install in our instance, since we don't have to re-do the sub floor if we're just replacing the tile from our current foyer floor.

We love carrara marble, so we picked out 16x16 inch honed carrara marble as the tile for our foyer.  It will hopefully make a statement when you walk in!

I think the sizing will be perfect for the room dimensions, although I'm not the most skilled in furniture placement and sizing.  I guess we'll wait and see what the outcome looks like.

The tile will also match the marble in the living room located to the right of the foyer.  It's called bringing it together (or trying...).

The foyer now is making a statement... (yikes)!

But we're going to change that statement from gaudy to simple elegant with a few updates.  We have already taken down the wallpaper, the closet (as you can see in the second picture above), and have had the entryway replaced.

Once the tile gets installed by the talented Tommy Bley (aka Poppy), we'll have our stair case installed!

Charlotte will be ONE in a few weeks, and with her climbing the stairs at any free opportunity, I think it's time for some railings.

I'm taking pictures every step of the way to remember where we have come in the time we've lived in our little house. I'll post them soon!

Wish us luck this weekend and next week that we can complete these projects before Charlotte's birthday party!

Courtney

Furniture Rehab

When we purchased our home, the previous owners of our house were kind enough to leave two matching dressers for us.   We both loved the shape and size of the dressers, but the style was a little outdated (seem to be a theme throughout our house?).

Instead of throwing these pieces out, I decided to take my hand at re-painting them!  This house project has definitely allowed me to try a lot of fun crafts & projects!

Here is a "before" picture of the dresser.  I took the hardware off before finding the camera, so I apologize!

And here is an "after" picture of the dresser...

Eric & I are both really happy about the way this dresser turned out!  We're planning on putting this in the foyer once we're finished with that room.

Kinda something like this....

House Beautiful

OR

Southern Accents

Repainting a piece of furniture wasn't as complicated as I originally thought!  I went to the hardware store and asked the man behind the counter what primer to get if I didn't want to sand the dresser at all.  He recommended Zissner's Cover Stain, which worked like a charm.

Then, I got a mini foam roller to apply the primer...

And last, Rustoleum Spray Paint in Black - Satin.  This color was compared to Pottery Barn Black in a blog I read. 

Total Cost of the project:

Dresser: Free

Primer: $18

Roller: $3

Paint: $12 

Total: $43

Here are some pictures of the project along the way....

 Before

Primed

 Painted!

We were trying to decide what hardware to buy for the dresser, but Eric pointed out that the original hardware would add character to the piece.  After seeing the final product, I completely agree! 

Thanks for stopping by...now off to watch some March Madness :)

The Andersons

Foyer Pictures

 Hello Friends :)  Last weekend we made a lot of progress on the hallway and foyer. 

Check out the pictures below that sequence the recent changes we've made.....

#1- Closet and Carpet still up. Most of the wallpaper has been taken off at this point.

#2- Closet out, carpet gone, and paint in the hallway upstairs!
I kind of miss my pink little stripes going up the stairs.



#3- Wall patched and ready to be prepped for painting!!


As we have now taken out the closet, you'll notice in the picture below that the bottom 4 stairs are no longer symmetrical.

Our next steps to finishing the foyer are to re-do the staircase to make the steps symmetrical, and of course to paint everything!

We love the "feather-down" color from Benjamin Moore that we have used throughout the house, so we're going to be using that color in the foyer as well.  The light color expands the feel of the room, making it seem larger.

However, we wanted to make a statement in the foyer, so our plan is to paint stripes of "feather-down" in eggshell and is hi-gloss......something that would resemble the following pictures:

As far as remodeling the stairs, we've contacted some custom stair companies to get a quote on how to fix our little problem.  Eric and I have a look that we're going for, so we're hopeful that we can get it for a decent cost.


Picture from Google Images (it's blurry so I cannot blow it up).

Also, here are a couple of pictures I like as well!
Staircase 1, Staircase 2.


That is what is new with us!  We're looking forward to having this project done...and excited to see the outcome!

Have a great weekend,
Courtney

Front Entrance

Front Entryway Pictures....

As you know, Eric and I have been working on the foyer and hallway throughout the last few weeks.  As we are still figuring out how to re-do our staircase (well...Tommy is figuring that out), I thought I would post some pictures of our new front entryway!

Also, we previously had a plain door knob on the new front door but we recently purchased and installed a new handle.  It was similar to the one I blogged (here) about a few months ago....what do you think?

Before picture of Entryway.  The glass was really bad at keeping the winter cold out of the house.  It had to go!

The previous owner told us that a famous glass maker created these windows. Cool fact, but not a fan....

another before shot with our beautiful wallpaper :)

After picture of our new front doors!

silly Tommy....

another outside shot.  Equipped with our new door handle.

I installed this myself...I felt proud that I didn't mess it up.

Here is an inside shot of the doors.  Although the lighting is dark, you can see how having clear glass changes the look and feel of the room.

We are very happy with the changes so far, and are looking forward to showing more pictures of the fully completed foyer :)