Renovation Updates

First things first: thank you so very much to all who have donated either money or materials to our renovation project.  We have been blown away by the kindness and generosity of friends, acquaintances, and strangers (well, "stranger" in the sense that we have one anonymous donor)

The house renovations are going well so far. Two projects down and the biggest one to go.

The Boys' Bedroom

Before

Allen made the needed changes in about two (long) evenings' work.

Since taking this picture, we've cleared out that pile
and moved furniture around 

See the nice side rails?

Rearranged shelving

 My goal this week is to paint a mural on the back wall behind the boys' beds (as you can see, that wall needs something!)

The Kitchen Floor

We had a few boxes of tile donated by friends, but discovered--alas!--that they were not enough to do the whole area.  We called some stores and searched online to find more of the same type of vinyl tile, but couldn't locate any.

What to do?  At first our plan was to find another kind of tile which would complement the ones we'd been given.  This proved hard to do, since it was a very distinctive, glossy gray stonework pattern.  We found some tile at Home Depot called "Copper Slate" and decided to get a box of it; we'd work it in somehow...

As we did the dry fitting, we realized that we really liked how the copper slate looked, and decided to do all copper slate tile instead of a mix of the two types.  Thanks to your generosity, donors, we could do that without worrying that it was going to break the bank.

A reminder of the "before" look:

Caution tape is one of our favorite decor motifs

Allen took about three (long) evenings to do demo, underlayment, and tiling.

Goodbye, tile...you were a nice idea, though

Some of the lineoleum laid by previous owners

Don't you just love perspective shots like this one?

Tada!

Ruby took this picture, which might explain why it's a rather low view

Any floor that causes Max to fall asleep on it is good in my book!

I REALLY like this new tile.  It's a much better camoflauge for our usual kitchen messes and it goes really nicely with the taupe walls and pumpkin accent wall.  And it's easier to clean without the grout.    It accentuates the kitchen cabinets.  It's great!!!

And we rearranged the kitchen furniture, too, so that the table is less in the way.  Rearranging is an extremely common occurence in our house (in case you hadn't guessed...)

Allen also had one last minute project to do: beautifying the shed. Here's how it turned out:

So now, it's on to the bathroom...the biggest project yet!  We'll keep you posted, of course.