If You Give a Room New Floors…

Ok, those of you with kids…have you heard of the series of books by Laura Numeroff: If You Give a Pig a Pancake or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?  Well, that’s what happened around here this weekend!  {If you haven’t heard of the books, basically it’s a comical sequence of events that follow “naturally” from one simple action.} 

So do you remember how we started refinishing the hardwood floors in our master bedroom last week?  The hardwood floors were finished in a matter of 2 days and technically we could have moved our bed and clothes back in last Friday.  However…you might recall, with all the furniture out of the room, I realized it was the perfect time to paint the ceiling if we were ever going to. 

Once I had the paint out, and the closet doors were down for the floor refinishing, it seemed only natural to paint the closet doors.  They were a dingy shade of off-white like everything else in that room and would look so much fresher with a coat of super white paint {Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace, to match the rest of the trim work in the room/house} 

This project turned into kind of a nightmare and had me wishing I’d never started.  {I knew this about 5 minutes in to this 5+ hour project} Turns out they were originally sprayed with oil based paint and the light sanding I gave them didn’t come close to prepping them for a fresh coat of latex semi-gloss.  Three coats and three hundred cuss words sighs of frustration later, they were “finished”.  Not my best work.

I would describe them as looking like 100+ year old doors from a beach house, that have been repainted about 10 times.  Well, at least that’s not the worst look I could have achieved!

Moving right along.  So naturally when you refinish any floor, you must first remove baseboards.  Which of course means you need to put them back…OR replace them if you are ready for a new look…which of course we are! 

My husband installed the same super tall {7 1/2 inch} baseboards that we put in around the rest of the house.  But why stop there?  If you are replacing baseboards, you might as well add some board and batten while you’re at it…easier to do it with the furniture out of the room, you know.

The first time we did board and batten was earlier this year in the family room.  We did traditional board and batten and actually installed the BOARDS behind the battens. {see it here}  However, for the bedroom, we decided to do the faux board and batten we’ve seen all over blog land. To do the faux board and batten, one must first paint the wall white to imitate the white wood panels. {I had to leave the places bare where DH marked off for the strips of wood to go.}

 

Now when you have a wet white roller, you naturally look around for other things that need to be rolled white…just so you don’t waste a perfectly good new roller.  Of course, that was easy….the insides of both of our closets were overdue for a fresh coat of paint:

So I finally got the white paint put away {after priming a few more boards outside} and started in with the caulk and wood putty.  DH had to snap a pic: {just ignore those shutters in the background…I have no idea what to do with them…see how they were ruined here}

Oh oh OH, I almost forgot to mention….because all of the wood needed to acclimate for 72 hours in the master bedroom, we were in *need* of something to do for a day…so we came out into the family room and finished the picture ledge on the board and batten!

I’ll show you more after pictures of it when I come up to breathe.

After that slight detour, we were back in the master bedroom. 

And here’s what it looks like when we decided to call it a night:

I’m realizing I haven’t even given you an after shot of the new floor, but you get a glimpse from this pic above.  We love it! 

So let me just summarize for those of you following my book analogy:

If you refinish the hardwood floors, you might as well paint the ceiling while the furniture is out of the way.  And speaking of painting, you should also paint the closet doors before putting them back up.  If you paint the closet doors, it’s only natural to paint the inside of the closet too.  With the wet roller from the closet, you can do your primer coat of paint for the faux board and batten.  Since you had to remove all of the baseboards to do the hardwood floor, makes sense to replace them with new ones to bring the house into the 21st century.  When you install new TALL baseboards, they are just shouting out for board and batten to go on top.  And of course, board and batten feels a little lonely without some crown to finish it off {Oh, I haven’t told you about that yet!}

Well, folks, that’s all for today. We’re BEAT! I’d say this hardwood floor project has accidentally officially turned into a

full-blown master bedroom remodel. 

On tap tomorrow: oh just a little a butt-load of painting! 

Smile!