(Pre Blog) Living Room Floor & Shelves

One the first projects we did after moving in (besides painting over all the pink) was ripping up the carpet in the living room and hallway replacing it with wood. We did this in December of 2010, so you will have to excuse the crapiness of the photos. I had no idea that anyone besides my family would see these, as it was a pre blog project. Anyway, here is what our floors look like. 

I freakin love them. 

Why? 

Carpet is gross. When I clean these I know they're CLEAN (keyword is when).

They look amazing. 

They're hand scraped and somewhat rustic and hold up beautifully. They've gotten a few scratches since we've put them in, but they were well deserved. 

We got a really good deal on them. 

They make my totally not fancy house feel custom and expensive, lol. 

Oh, and no more carpet. That's worth mentioning twice.

So the terrible pictures I was telling you about? Here ya go.

The very before...

The just before

The during (they're glued down)

Now

They're handscraped  Acacia  from Skyline Floorscapes. I couldn't tell you what color or the exact price, but want to say they were around $4 a square foot (including glue). That's WAY cheap for nice engineered flooring. One of the best parts is that they come in a lot of different lengths (as opposed to the normal one length). You usually have to add about 10% for waste, however we had basically no wasted wood. The only leftovers we had were used to make the counter in our laundry room, and if you go check it out you'll see that its not much.

Also, along with replacing the floor we also replaced the trim...we're working on slowly replacing the trim throughout the entire house. 

Before.

Now.

Next item up is the shelves in the living room (we did these not long after the floors.) I really really wish I had taken more pictures of the process, it would have made a great tutorial. 

I designed these...we needed a solution for our huge empty living room wall and we also needed storage. (They are pretty substantial, the longest one is twelve feet.) My brother in law, Keith, did most of the actual building. (He's a woodworker and dang good at it.) They're designed to look like solid pieces of rustic wood, but in reality they're just made of plywood. Keith and Adam decided to use the "bad side" of the plywood so that there would be more variation and knots showing. We sanded the crud out of them, stained with our own concoction (so they would match the floors) and finished with tung oil.

Now, we could have just cut some plywood and put them together, but then the ends would have showed and you would know instantly that they are simply little plywood boxes. Instead, Keith decided to cut all the pieces at a 45 degree angle so that all seams would be hidden. Here is a close up shot...

Totally should have dusted before I took close up pics. Oh well, my secrets out...I have dusty shelves.

The shame!

I did take a couple pictures when they were being installed. Here is before, and if you look closely at the shelves on the floor you can see how they are hollow in the center.

To get them to stay on the wall, the boys hung a strip of wood the size of the opening and then slid the shelf on (actually they had to pound them on, those suckers aren't going anywhere). 

 To keep them from potentially drooping and to add an industrial look we secured the shelf front to the wall with wire cable. 

(Oh the wires...we need to put them in the wall. Hubby nagging commences now.)

And there you have it, beautiful custom shelves. Consider yourself caught up on all of our living room projects. Now to move onto the new, fun, non brown ones :)

Linked to:Lines Across My Face, Between Naps on the Porch, Keeping It Simple, CraftOManiac, Homemaker on a Dime, The Girl Creative, DIY Home Sweet Home, Mad in Crafts, Polly Want A Crafter, Home Savvy, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Cherished Bliss, Confessions, Strictly Homemade, Sugar Bee Crafts, Someday Crafts, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Serenity Now, Thirty Days, The Crafty Nest, Five Days 5 Ways, Simply Designing, French Country Cottage, 504 Main, Chic on a Shoestring, While He Was Napping, Whipperberry, Addicted 2 Decorating, Tatertots & Jello, Lolly Jane