Updating the House

We have lived at our current address for about 11 years now.  And after 11 years, apparently, it is time for a few updates.  While we were out of town the last time, Hubby had the painters come in and repaint my bar, the stairway hall,  all of the bathroom cabinets and re-stain my exterior doors.  Last week I had another surprise update, which was to remove the granite countertop on the kitchen sink side of the room and replace it with a new under mount version!  A while back, we also added a few more outdoor lights from Bevelo down in New Orleans.  I was super excited to have all of these things done but mainly because it wasn't my idea but his!

I love my under mount sink!  Whenever you wipe the counter down now, you don't have that ledge around the sink that catches everything.

I was never able to find an entry light for my front door and finally 11 years later I found this one at Bevelo and am SO happy to have something hanging from there now!

We previously had 2 fans hanging out on the back porch and we also changed those out with these lights from Bevelo.

Here, you can see the other lights we purchased from there a couple of years ago when we completed out back yard renovation and pool house.  These lights fit in perfectly with the French Country style of our home.

And now we continue the updates since we are about to leave town for 12 days...yes, you heard me right 12 days!  (But that's for another post...)  Anyway, the current updates we will be working on are a little more complicated and require a little more work, both on the part of the contractor AND us.  It all started with Hubby saying (And I totally agreed) that we needed to replace the carpet in our bedroom.  Well, of course, I was all for that and even picked out and AWESOME one.  However, then I began thinking about all the work it would take (aka:  the mess it would make) for us to do that.  All the furniture in our room would have to be broken down and moved AND the floor in the closet would have to be totally cleaned out (which isn't a bad idea...just something I'm not fond of tackling...EVER) in order to do it.  Well, I pondered and pondered this idea and the carpet is ordered and we are waiting for it to come in.

NOW...the real big project that I had NO idea Hubby was thinking about is the refinishing of our antique, pine hardwood floors.  It took FOREVER to put these floors in whenever we originally built the house but WOW was it worth it.  I absolutely loved them.  And them there was the house fire incident.  Yep, while we were moving in without even all of the boxes unpacked we had some people out here sealing our brick floors again.  They placed a highly flammable liquid near our commercial oven (whose pilots lights stayed lit) and BOOM!  There was so much damage that EVERYTHING in the house had to be redone; painting, granite replaced, carpeting, duct work AND the hardwood floors and brick floors had to be refinished.  We hired a floor restorer out of Baton Rouge to come in and refinish both the wood and brick floors.  I'm not going to lie; this was a pretty dark time for me.  We had been building this house for months and then to have to start over and wait for several more months was awful.  So, in saying all of this, I have never really wanted to have much done to the house again, whether for fear of something happening again or just not having the energy to deal with it.  But now...as we speak...the floor finishers are here.  They are sanding a small portion of the floor and preparing it for stain samples so I can decided what color I want to go with this time.

The dark color of stain I originally chose has grown old to me.  Oh, it's not that I don't like it because I do.  It is beautiful the day it is mopped but then you can see every footstep and piece of dirt on it and that drives me crazy!

Here is the current color of my floors now and as you can see there are cracks that need to be filled in and the finishers will do that with the sawdust from the sanding process.  It really is a pretty neat process if you've never seen it done.

Here is the small section that was sanded this morning and you can see there are two stain samples on there right now.  I like the one closest but think it's a little light.  The one in the middle is too close to the one I already have.  Tomorrow morning they will return with another stain that is in between these two and I'm pretty sure it will be the one I choose.  I want something this time that shows more of the grain of the wood.

So, there ya go!  We are well on our way to a freshened up house.  Once the floors are done and everything is put back in place I will be happy...because the floors, after all, are a pretty big project in and of themselves.  I'll post an update whenever all of this is done.  And now for that 12 day trip I will be taking...When, where, with whom and what I will be doing.  Tune in tomorrow for all of the details!