Refinishing the floors in the loft were super easy compared to the floors in the loft bedroom. For prep, we just swept the floors with the wet/dry vacuum and mopped the floor. Once it was dry, we put on 2 coats of polyurethane, letting the floor dry in between coats. The polyurethane was just the cheap stuff but it did a fantastic job and went on super heavy. 

Here's how the loft floor looked before:



and here's what it looked like after one coat of polyurethane:




Also, we put up a new railing, which I'll cover on another post. That weird spot in the middle of the floor is where we forgot to put polyurethane on the first time! We fixed that in the second coat! #professionals



Here is the new floor and old floor together. This is before we put polyurethane on the new floor. It's not a total match, but fairly close for being done 25+ years apart!

Since purchasing our house at the end of November, my life has went from being fairly boring to super busy. Trying to keep up on the housework at two homes has been very challenging. For a while I was just completely overwhelmed by it all! I didn't know where to even begin. Then, one day I had a burst of energy and began doing several things around the house. It was then that I set a goal of trying to complete at least five extra tasks a day. Some days they're small tasks like making the bed or cleaning the litter box. Other days I've cleaned both bathrooms from to top to bottom or scrubbed the kitchen floor. Just getting started was the difficult part for me and now that I try to accomplish five extra things a day, it makes cleaning a little easier for me. It has quickly become my #1 cleaning tip.

My obsession with chalk paint continues! For now, I'm just painting small things and trying to get a feel for the paint. I'm a total amateur at painting but practice makes perfect, right? Here are some things I've been painting lately. Right now I just have before pictures because they're not done quite yet. I recently splurged on some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and I can't wait to show you what I'm doing with that!

I needed a place to store my chalk paint supplies and this shower caddy is perfect!

My husband and I are on vacation from work this week and the major projects we wanted to complete were refinishing the upstairs floors. Here's some pictures of the loft bedroom floor when we first purchased the house:



We could tell there used to be carpet up there because of the little pieces of carpet padding hanging out and also the many staples we pulled out of the floor. The floor is just standard tongue and groove boards. They also make up the ceiling of the downstairs area, which we didn't really notice until stain started dripping through the downstairs ceiling! The boards that make up the floor were in rough shape. Mystery stains were everywhere and we found some definite pet stains. With 25+ years of being there, the boards shifted all around and are far from perfect. The spacing is an issue, which resulted in the dripping ceiling. We figured if this didn't work out, we could always put carpet back up there, even though my plan for this house is for it to be completely carpet free.

To prep the floor, we first swept it with our wet/dry vacuum. We tried to get every piece of dirt out that we could, just to see what the floor looked like. Visually, it actually didn't look too bad after sweeping it. Then we completely sanded the entire floor with a sheet sander and belt sander. Yep, we were down there using the smallest sanders possible! The belt sander did take some of the stains away, but was cutting the floor in some places, so we broke out the sheet sanders, which actually did a fantastic job. We had a small snafu with one of the sheet sanders so my husband actually just took a drywall hand sander and sanded that way for a while! Total professionals here.

Once we got everything sanded, we vacuumed again. We were going to wait to put the stain down because we weren't sure if the floor was clean enough, but decided to stain as sort of a last minute decision before we left for the evening. 

Here's the stain we used:


We were hoping to match the stain on the loft floor, but felt it was impossible to match a 25+ year old floor. We had no idea what stain the previous owners used, so we just bought the lightest stain possible. There's going to be a door and drywall in between the loft and bedroom, so even if the stains didn't match, it wouldn't be such a big deal.

Staining the floor was actually the easiest part of this entire project. I took a paint brush and stained around the wall areas and my husband used a roller to put the rest of the stain on. We wanted the stain to cover the entire floor and we weren't sure if the roller could get in the corners so that's why I painted around the sides first.

Now we're just waiting for the stain to dry:

The floor actually looks really nice and the imperfections give it the primitive look, which I love and fits this house perfectly. As an added bonus, the bedroom floor and the loft floor actually match pretty well, which was an awesome surprise.

Can we talk about this desk?



Some people score incredible finds when they go to the thrift store. I scored this desk.

It looks a lot better in the picture, but this thing is downright embarrassing. My husband practically hid his face when he helped me carry it out of the store. He made me help carry it because I think he was way to embarrassed to carry it alone!

It looks a lot better in the picture, but the top of this desk kind of resembles a banana. Also, it's totally that cheap particle board stuff and not solid wood. I plan to completely replace the "wood" parts and spray paint the legs, so basically I bought it for the plans! I also found out when I brought it home that it won't fit in the place that I want it, so I'm going to have to modify the size of the desk slightly.

I saw potential in this little desk so that's why I brought it home.

Since emerging from the dark side of renovation, I've become obsessed with the little coat closet that my husband built.  Of course, I went to my buddy, Pinterest, in search of inspiration on how to decorate this thing.  My coat closet will never be as cool as most of these, though, because it is the smallest coat closet in existence.  I keep calling it a closet, but it's totally not a closet because closet doors will not fit in such a small space.  It's more of a coat nook or a tiny place to hang very few coats.  It's a million times bigger than the space we have in our other house to hang our coats on, though!  All we have there is a coat rack that's broken!  At least this nook has sides.  Our other one is just hanging out in our narrow hallway. 

I'll leave you with the board I created of my favorite coat closets:

Follow Tiff's board coat nooks on Pinterest.