Have you ever wondered...

What it looks like behind the scenes when someone is doing a renovation? I know I do. I read lots of blogs, and some of them deal with home renovations, decorating, and you only ever see the horrible before's, and the beautiful, glossy afters. You never see what is really going on while they're doing the renovations.

I decided to show you what it really looks like when you decide to renovate your office. You should maybe sit down for this. It's not pretty.

To refresh your memory this is what our guest room looked like shortly after we finished it's transformation:

Ahhhh, so bright, so crisp, so clean!

This is what it looks like now crammed with all the contents of our office that we could move:

Told you. It's definitely not pretty. It's even messier since I've been trying to sort through the mountain of paper trying to figure out what can be shredded.

Man, we have a lot of shit!

Busy Little Bees

That is what Andre and I have been lately. You may (or may not) remember when I mentioned that my sister (and her boyfriend, and his daughter and his dog) would be moving out of my parents house into their own home, and moving their stuff out of our house. Well they did, at the beginning of the month! Our plan was to get the guestroom, where they were storing their bed, painted, and the carpet ripped out to be ready for Christmas. This is where the busy like bees part comes in.

Now that Andre has started his new job I thankfully have him home all weekend, so he has gotten just a hint of what most of my weekends have been like since we moved into our house.

Here is what we started with:

This room was also known as the room where beige semi-gloss came to die. Every surface in this room was covered in beige semi-gloss. The walls, the trim, the closet doors, hell even the ceiling! It was horrible. Our first step was to choose a paint colour. My plan was to do neutral in here, I had visions of creamy yellow walls and crisp white trim. I picked a few samples that fit the bill, then found the sample for Simply Sage. I just loved the colour so threw it in the pile. I got home, put the samples up on the wall, and well Andre loved the green colour. So we went with it.

Now this is what the room looks like:

These pictures were taken before I painted the trim yesterday. It is all a beautiful white, not beige. While you're looking at those pictures, look at the bottom of the picture. That horrible brown/rust colour is (was) the carpet! It was absolutely horrible! As of this past Saturday it is history. Destined for the dump as of this Saturday when we drop it off.

Our plan for the floor was to just leave the parquet wood floors until we could decide what to do with the flooring on the entire second floor. Then we discovered a teeny tiny spot of mold when we removed the baseboards. Then we decided to pull up the carpet to see what was underneath.

::Le Sigh:: Gotta love old water damage! So back to the drawing board for us. We decided that we would put laminate down on the floors of this room and the office. We would eventually (when budget permits) replace the carpet on the stairs, upstairs hallway and master bedroom.

Now the room is waiting for the new floors to be installed. My sister is having new laminate installed at her house, and the guy that is doing her floors is coming to give us an estimate later on this week, or early next week. He is doing an amazing job at her house, so I hope he gives us a good price!

Stay tuned for some more pictures over the next couple weeks as this room is completed!