:: Kicking Some Home Improvement Butt ::

We have lived in our house for over three-and-a-half years and our touch has been left of all but one of the spaces. I'll try and dig up what this room looked like when we first bought the house but you can see some remnants of the hideous four color border that has been the thorn in my existence. A couple years ago I had a serious lapse in judgement and painted the room blood red. Yeah, don't ask.

Back in January my mom bought Denay an adorable, girly poka-dot rug from Target and it's taken me this long to get my act together. The room Denay is in now has carpet and our spare room is the only one upstairs with wood floors so I've had it in the back of my mind to finish it so we can put her rug to good use on the wood floors. We bought primer and Trevor did that back in November (FYI-Benajmin Moore Paint RULES). Just before I left for Edmonton I finished the two coats of Misty Lilac paint. We were still left with the ugly painted border that was done so thick you could easily see the ridges under our new paint. We thought about beadboard but it was pricey and labour-intensive. The next best thing was a chair rail so last week after dinner we shipped off to Home Depot and came home with all the wood we needed. The next call was to my dad to ask if he would help me with all this tools and toys. So on Saturday he came for breakfast and we worked for six hours creating a three layer "custom" chair rail........

It goes without saying which the before and which is the after :) Yesterday I spent the bulk of my Sunday taping and then painting and painting and painting and managed to get it almost all done. Today was spent removing tape and doing touch-ups and then in the midst of our first snow storm I packed up Denay and it was off to Rona to rent a floor sander and to Home Depot for blinds. You can see best in the first collages the difference in the floors. Trev did a blitz when he got home from work and managed to get them sanded in just a couple hours. Then it was back to Rona to return the rental and buy everything else we need to stain and seal the floors.

Can you tell I am so tired of having an un-done, sloppy room in my house? We hope to have the floors stained and blinds hung before the weekend! Then we're going to move Denay into her new room.

As a side note, the wall color is much closer in person to the before picture than the after. On second it looks quite pink but it's a very soft lovely lilac purple and we plan to stain the floors a medium chestnut brown.

I can't even explain how satisfying it is to final have this project on it's way to being done! Can I get a holla from all those do-it-yourself mommas out there?!