My House Project

So I have been wishing that my living room didn't have carpet for a couple of years now.  This old house has original hardwoods and I decided that the white stained carpet had to go.  So 2 weeks ago I got busy.  I moved all of the furniture out of the room and ripped up the carpet and padding in the living room and hallway.  Joe came home from work to find the pile of carpet out on the front porch.  I had a lot of work ahead of me.  The previous owner had painted latex paint over oil paint without doing the primer first.  Latex based paint doesn't stick to oil based paint without it.  So the paint on the walls had been getting worse each day.  I had to scrape and sand all the walls to remove most of the paint.  Then I had to do the primer and then finally the finishing paint.  Scraping and sanding was not the most fun thing I ever did.  After that was done my wonderful sister Annalisa spent as much time as she could helping me with the primer and paint.  That took a week for us to get done.  Then Joe sanded and refinished the hardwood floors.  That took 3 days as each coat of the stain, sealant and finish took about a day each to dry.  We spent one night sleeping at Joe's parents house because the smell was too powerful.

The first morning that Joe put the stain on the floors, I was in my room sleeping and was having a dream that had a powerful smell in it.  I woke up to Joe yelling at me that the stain on the hardwoods would take a few hours to dry.  Then he left to work.  I had Clara and Emmett in my room with me and Hyrum was still asleep in his room in the basement. Averee was already off to school. That's when I realized that I was trapped.  Joe had painted me into my room! I didn't want to ruin the work Joe had done by walking in the hallway but Clara was saying she was hungry, and then Hyrum woke up and came upstairs and I couldn't just make my kids wait till it was dry.  So, I decided to climb out the window.  I glanced out mine that went out to the front of the house, but the neighbor across the street was enjoying his morning smoke out on his porch and I didn't want him to think that my house was on fire or something.  So I decided to toss Clara into her room across the hallway and managed to bridge myself over enough to hand Emmett to her.  Then I jumped across.  So I get the window to the backyard open and I lower Clara down.  Then I start thinking what about Emmett? How am I supposed to go out this little window with him and not die?  So Hyrum to the rescue! I have Hyrum come out and I lower Emmett to him.  Now the hard part.  First problem - small window and big butt.  I started to go out feet first facing up.  Got halfway before I realized that I would have to decapitate myself if I was to drop out this way.  So I try to roll over.  But my butt and hips wouldn't let me.  Jammed up no matter which way I turned.  The whole time I'm thinkin'.  It's a dang good thing that I'm doing this in the backyard and not the front.  My neighbors would have had a good laugh. Second Problem - I'm short.  So I pull myself all the way out and while standing on the dresser in front of the window squat down and go out feet first on my belly.  So I'm slowly lowering myself down till I'm hanging by my armpits and still have a foot or so till the ground.  I drop down and one foot goes into the window well and the other hits the ground.  This of course throws me off balance and I scrape my left arm all the way down the brick.  I have a nice line of scratches and several good bruises on my arm, but I made it out alive.  So I get the kids fed and go on with my life.  Third Problem - going out window not necessary. Then my husband tells me that night that I could have just walked on the floor and it wouldn't have hurt it one bit!  I told him that would have been nice to know before he left!

So here's some pictures of before and after.

Before

After Carpets ripped out 

Me painting

Finished, I don't have couches anymore, I took the green ones to the D.I. cause I didn't have anywhere to store them while we were working on the room.  

I'm so glad to be done.  Next is the dining room.  But I'll wait till after Christmas.