Family room – almost there!

Well hey there! We’re heading into week four of our family room renovation and I wanted to give you my weekly update. First of all – the whole it will cost more and take longer than you think thing? Yep. I thought this process would take maybe two weeks. It was on track to be done by the end of this week (three weeks in) but the sander the flooring guy uses is being fixed and that will push us back. So by next Wednesday I hope to have a “completed” room. Completed in that the construction is done – then my to do list starts and it’s a doozy. :)

After they are done I can start on the wall treatment, baseboards, priming and painting the fireplace and tiling it as well. Oh, and painting the whole room and kitchen. I honestly can’t wait.

Today two big things are happening – the floors are getting patched!:

I can’t wait to see this process! Our guy is feathering in new boards, then will sand down the entire room and restain and poly. Smaller areas he’s OK with just feathering and not redoing the entire floor, but he said it looks a ton better to just redo the whole area.

We have three areas total. The one above where the long wall was, a tiny spot where another one was near our mud room, and the last minute addition is this one:

Back when we had the fridge leak (that resulted in these beautiful hardwoods) we had the island put down before the floors. I immediately regretted that but it was too late. We were just so happy to have our island back in place after weeks of mess. :)

But the whole kitchen redo I've had planned for years involves a bigger island, so I will be building on to our current one. I want to move it away from the fridge and cabinets just a bit – maybe six inches both ways.

The floors won’t be sanded and stained till next week but by tonight we’ll have smooth floors and won’t trip in holes, so that is AWESOME.

The big progress has happened over by the fireplace. I showed you this pic early on I think:

Here’s how that area above the fireplace looks now:

Well, actually, they installed the board in the middle yesterday so I primed and caulked last night:

The TV bracket will hang in that little alcove, so when it’s hanging it will look flush with the wall. I didn’t want to see the big bracket and I’m hoping this helps. The audio/visual guy comes today to finish all that up – for the first time ever I’m going to have someone else hang one of our TVs and it’s pretty awesome. :) (He is installing a wireless program too so it just made sense to have him do it all.)

The lighting is DONE and I’m SO HAPPY. They put in two directional lights over the fireplace – we had them before but I chose four inch lights this time. (Just for this spot – they are expensive!):

Since the ceiling was already opened up and we were doing drywall repairs anyway, we went ahead and had recessed lights installed as well – six to be exact:

Holy cats, that is seriously awesome. LOVE it. We have two in the old office area and it’s the perfect amount of light – and of course it’s all on dimmers. :) It’s so nice in here at night! My husband was so excited for it to get dark that night, it was hilarious.

MY favorite part is the fireplace area. This is my inspiration as a reminder:

I love it for many reasons, but especially because it has the same deep fireplace that we are dealing with. After studying the photo for a bit I asked the guys to beef up the tops of the side cabinets. They did a great job:

Those cabinets are just stock uppers from Lowe’s – are you surprised? They’re my favorite. ;) I wanted them deeper than 12 inches though so they could hold the TV components – so they beefed them up from the inside. You can’t even tell they were 12 inchers:

Brilliant. They even took out the adjustable laminate shelves and rebuilt nicer, thicker ones. I love them! I’ll cut out the fronts of the doors and replace the wood with metal sheeting like this – I have to do that so the components can breath.

So by the end of today, provided all goes well, we will have flat floors and the TV and speakers will be hooked up again. This means I can finally arrange all the furniture just the way I want it – I’m very excited for tonight. :)

I’ll get all that moved just in time to move it all back out next week so he can sand and stain. :)

Everything is going GREAT – I’ve been so pleased with the process and all the contractors. There’s only one hiccup so far – they had to tear the island apart to get it out. It looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

I nearly teared up, not gonna lie. This poor island has been redone so many dang times. Now the island extension idea may happen sooner than I thought. :)

We are nearing the end – WHOO! The costs really haven’t been that bad at all. We only increased the plan a bit when things like the lights came up. We’re adding some sound system stuff that is a little extra too, but other than that this reno is insanely cheaper than our original plan of adding on to the house.

Thanks for sharing my excitement along the way! :)