A Work In Progress

Some of you may know that we are in the process of remodeling the house that used to be Shane's grandparents. We have been working on it for a while now....like.......almost a couple of years. We have been trying to do all  that we can by ourselves. It has been an experience, to say the least.  I wanted to give an update on how it's working out.  The home is an older block home; made out concrete blocks.  The interior walls had an old outdated paneling hung over them, that we took down.  We also knocked a wall down that was between the dining room and living room.  This opened it up quite a bit!  You can see in the photo below what it looked like prior to the drywall work.  Check out that green wall that had been hiding under the paneling for who knows how many years.  Minty :)

This past week my mother in law was out of school for the Thanksgiving holidays (she's a teacher), so she came over to give us a hand.  The drywall was finished and primed, so she and I were in charge of getting the wainscoting boards stained and  a coat or two of poly.  We opted for a "natural wood" look, so I picked a lighter shade for the stain. I tell you, I don't want to go through the process of trying to pick out colors for anything EVER again!  It is so frustrating for me....I can never make a decision.  ( By the way, we had summer weather the whole Thanksgiving holiday week.  It was in the 80's.  Can you believe it?)

After we worked on the planks we'd let them sit on the saw horses for a while under the lights until they were dry enough to handle. 

Then we'd take all of the planks and lay them on the floor in other rooms of the house to let them dry for the rest of the time.  The stain took 8 hours while the polyurethane took about 4-5 hours.

Below is a photo of the same room with the boards in place.  There will be a chair rail put on top of the boards and the windows will be cased in with the wood.  We are going to get a new fan and definitely a new front door, but for now it's just a work in progress.

This is a shot from the other side of the room that has the chair rail added.  It is really turning out nice.  It's pretty neat to  see that what you've envisioned come to be.  

Hopefully we'll make more progress through the remainder of  the year and be able to move in by Spring of next year!  My fingers are crossed very tightly!