Old Hardwood Floors

The original hardwood floors were in pretty good shape on the second storey.  We decided to get them refinished so we protected the floors with paper before we started the demolition.

Once the drywall was finished, we hired Tip Top Flooring to refinish the floors, stairs and railing.  (Thanks to Maggie and Rob at Okay, Now What? for the referral!)

We knew that we wanted to go darker than what was originally there, but selecting the stain colour was a lot harder than we had anticipated.  After hours of staring at samples and changing our minds a couple of times, we settled on Early American.

  Given that the floors, stairs and railing are three different types of wood, we weren’t sure how they would turn out.  Fortunately, the colour was a good choice and we’re really happy with the results.

Upstairs Bathroom Plans

We’ve chosen all our finishes for the upstairs bathroom and work will be starting this week. In the shower, we replaced the octagon window and built a shelf into the wall. We decided to keep the original cast iron tub, so we’re having it refinished.

We both really like glass mosaic tiles, so we wanted to incorporate them into this bathroom. Here is the glass tile we chose:

Our plan is to tile the three walls surrounding the tub with 3x6” white subway tiles, with an accent strip of the glass mosaic tiles midway up the wall. The remaining walls will be painted gray. For the floors, we selected 2” hexagons in white carrara marble. Here is a rough idea of what we’re planning for the tiles:

The bathroom is pretty tiny and there wasn’t any way to change the layout to give us more space. To maximize our space, we searched for a small vanity that would give us a bit of counter space and storage, without sticking out too far into the middle of the bathroom. We finally found one we love from TUBS. It will allow us to avoid walking into a sharp corner when we enter the bathroom.

Stairs and Stuff

Today, we continued sanding and priming.  With the help of Marilyn and Cody, we got tackled the staircase.  The plan for the stairs is:

• paint the spindles and stair risers white
• stain the banister, post and stair treads dark brown. 

Since we’re hiring a flooring company to refinish the hardwood floors on the second storey, we will get them to do the staining on the stairs.  We’re doing the painting ourselves. 

 

 

We also did some work on the built-in linen closet in the upstairs hallway.  We removed the hardware, sanded the drawers and door, and primed everything.  We plan to paint it white and add some updated drawer pulls.

Here’s the closet before:

And here’s what we’ve done so far:

Before: Bedroom

There are three bedrooms upstairs.

Before: Bathroom

There's only one bathroom right now, but we plan to add a second in the basement.