Master Bedroom: Nearly Complete

The white dresser is my childhood furniture and is temporarily filling in until we get find a bedroom set we like.

The rocking chair belonged to my great-grandparents (Kornic).

The mirror and lamps are from our trip to IKEA. We have a mini project lined up for them later.

And in case you were wondering where all of our clothes in the several dressers we used to use disappeared to...

Kristin's closet.

Andrew's closet.

The closet doors need a second coat and the bedroom door needs to be primed and painted, but that's about all that is left. We still have yet to follow through on purchasing a bed, night stands, or a dresser, so I guess that's still on the list.

After the game this afternoon Andrew decided to knock out the mirror and light project.

Andrew's new Dremel tool is already being used to create a mounting plate for the lamps.

Poor lighting is a pet peeve we share, and a room with no full-length mirror is a pet peeve I deal with on my own. Problem solved.

Syracuse Thanksgiving 2010

Click on the picture of Aunt Jane to see the rest of the album.

Closet Installation Part I

Before JoePa won #400, we picked up the components for our closet organizers. There are four closets in our master bedroom and they are each a different size. I hope we can keep all of our measurements straight.

You know a project is going to be a success when you read the instructions.

One closet down, three to go.

I can help AND take pictures at the same time!

In our rush to get home to watch the game, we miscalculated a few quantities, so we'll have to make a trip back to Home Depot tomorrow. I'm sure you can imagine how upset Andrew must be about that. (Yeah right.)

And for a little perspective, this is what the closets looked like before.

Happy Fall 2010 !

Fall 2010 at Penn State

Finishing the Wood Floor

The last steps in finishing the floor are applying a sealant and two coats of polyurethane. Forty-five minutes after applying the coat of sealant, we put down the first coat of polyurethane. Then 18 hours after we applied the second coat.

You can see a big difference just with the coat of sealant.

Actually, the final step is patience. The polyurethane needs time (recommended 72 hours) to cure and harden before you can walk on it and then even more time (recommended 2 weeks) before you can put any rugs or furniture on it.

We can hardly believe it's the same floor we started with a few weeks ago. What a huge difference! One more week of curing time and we can move in.

Next step: Closet organizers.

We rented a random orbit sander from Home Depot on Sunday to sand the floors in the master bedroom. For the most part we just needed to take down the layer of sealer, but there were a few paint, animal, and water stains that needed a little extra attention.

To protect the rest of the house, we stretched a piece of plastic over the doorway and put a fan in the window to create a vacuum and hopefully encourage any dust to blow out the window. To protect ourselves, we wore hearing protection as well as dust masks.

Because we have never finished a floor before, we watched a few instructional videos online, including on from the manufacturer of the sander.

The next step is to try to lighten the water stains that we couldn't sand out and fill in a few cracks with some homemade putty. After we clean up a bit we can seal the wood and start putting down the 2-3 coats of polyurethane.