First off Ryan got a lot more trim done in the ‘playroom’ – all except the crown molding is done –  but we immediately filled the playroom with everything from the ‘office’ which is twice the size of it so I never got a picture and now you can’t see the wainscoting at all.  I’ll do pics once we empty that room again to paint/finish it.  The reason we were rushing was that the main goal was to use the playroom as office/playroom while the floors got finished in the real office during the end of Ryan’s paternity leave (now over).

Ryan with the help of his dad got the new floors installed in the office, front hallway and diningroom – that’s it for our flooring.  The kitchen and livingroom will be tiled.  We had planned to have enough wood for the kitchen too but it didn’t work out that way and tile will be easy enough (no long delays and needing to leave the house like we did for the wood floors).

Office floors installed

Hallway

Diningroom

This is all Cherry just like upstairs and we did a clear satin finish.  The finish was tough because we had to get the kids (and ourselves) out of the house for a week so on Monday I moved the girls over to my parent’s house for the week.  Ryan sanded the floors with some help from my dad on the drum sander.  He had finished by about 4:30 pm so we decided to test out Evie taking a bottle for the first time and he took the girls to gymnastics and then to mom and dad’s for the night.  I stayed and vacuumed and put down the first coat of poly.  Evie took the bottle splendidly.

First coat – still wet

Tuesday night we swapped and Ryan did the sanding/vacuum/poly.

Wednesday Ryan was back to work so we decided to tackle the rooms together late at night using babysitters for the kids.  Luckily we have awesome grandparents on both sides that helped out with piano lessons and the baby duties.  Ryan and I got the floors sanded, vacuumed (twice) and poly’d and back by just after 9pm (basically 3 hour job).  Evie did great with her bottles again (and no issues going back to nursing – yay!).

Office floor finished!

Hallway finished!

Diningroom finished

We moved back in kind of on Friday but then we were away for 1/2 of the weekend so we really moved back in late Saturday night.  We’re keeping the floors empty for now although we are using them, just no furniture – giving it until next Saturday when our new diningroom table arrives before anything heavy goes on.  The office will stay pretty empty so Ryan can work on trim in there and we can hopefully completely finish that room!  Once that’s done we’ll empty the playroom again and finish that room (including poly the floor in there which is still waiting).  We shouldnt’ have to move out for that at least as we can close that room off and open windows to air it out quickly.

Lots of house progress and now it’s getting toward summer and yard work.  Ryan got a new mower and has started the process of seeding the lawn to make it look nice this year.  I’m going to clean up the gardens next to the house and use them as a veggie garden this year (just a little bit – nothing major) – maybe next year we’ll actually put in our real gardens but for now it will be good to have a little something as our kids LOVE fresh veggies.