living room/dining room

Alrighty, so here are some after pics...

When you first walked into the house before we cleaned it up there were a few things you noticed right away: the sea of green carpet that you literally had to rake to get clean, the overwhelming stench of cat pee, brown and orange flower power carpet in the kitchen, and every wall painted a different shade of white or cream.
We closed on the house on May 31 and got to work right away clearing out Ms. Lucille's stuff: furniture, boxes of yarn, hundreds of plastic bags, old perfume bottle boxes (don't know why she felt the need to save the boxes), and just junk. We spent an entire evening filling up a flat bed trailer with junk and in the end filled up 2 more junk loads. My mom and dad and sis and paul came over and helped us rip out all the green carpet and then we got busy washing walls, spackling holes, caulking all the trim, etc... All the prep work for painting was quite exhausting. All the ceilings, trim and walls got painted and we carpeted all the bedrooms and the downstairs. Then we moved in on June 17th--we had so much help from the elders quorum and others from our ward.
Mike built up this floor that was sunken in so that the living room would all be one level. Our good friend Adam had put wood floors in before and so he was our expert in getting us started and lending us all the proper tools we would need. Adam was over many nights helping Mike and was so helpful. Then he and I laid all the hardwood, sanded it and then put the finish on. I was surprised at how easy it was once you had the proper tools and a system down. I would grab pieces of wood from the pile and spread the glue on and put it in place and then Mike would pound and nail them in. It was fun picking out the different boards since each one is so unique. I absolutely LOVE how the tigerwood turned out and how my amazing hubbie was able to make the new floor. We had a LOT of help from family and friends from our ward with so many aspects of this remodel from babysitting, sanding and spackling trim, hauling trailers full of CrAp to the dump, washing walls, building up the floor, moving our heavy piano, etc... This house really feels like home--especially now that the cat pee smell and green shag carpet are gone!
First, here are the pics of Mike building up his floor and the flooring progression. Carter took these:

And now here are some before and afters:


Doesn't it look AMAZING?? And I just love having fresh flowers to pick from the back yard to put on my table!