So it occurred to me that I should be more prepared and ready to make decisions when it comes to the house. I am still struggling with what tile to buy and put in the basement. With three weeks left until the space needs to be done – grappling with this decision should have been done weeks or years ago (!@*!#)

So in order to not experience this again I’m going to take you through a magical world of future plans.

Here are all the inspirations I have for the Downstairs “look”. Mind you. I have three weeks to pull this off.

When the downstairs is done – It’s time to work on my own personal living space. Let’s start with the Front Door.

1. The Foyer Natural Stone needs to be sealed. The crumbling rocks are ruining my soft bamboo!

Stone at the front door

Ruined Bamboo

2. The bench seat needs a lid! As you probably recalled – it has been improved on…. but not finished. I insulated it and re-framed it but now it needs the finishing touches!

3. Moving over to the TV wall (Which I haven’t revealed yet because of this detail)

The wall needs to be painted. I want a nice gray color – but not too dark.

4. I need a new vent cover for the Hallway. All I have to do is order it…. but it hasn’t been a priority.

5. Need to Install the Pocket Doors between the Living Room and the Office.

Here are my inspirational Pinterest pieces:

6. Need a Bookshelf to organize all my books and ideas in the office:

This is the project I am MOST excited for! Hurry up and let me organize!

7.  Paint the interior doors white. They are currently the gross fake, hollow, wood looking doors, and I want to replace all the door handles.

9. After all those realistic To Do items – I am also going to need new living room chairs. Here is my inspiration:

I think those are some hefty to do’s for the upcoming winter.

I’ve never been asked to shop for fabric before. In fact – my last re-post of fabric websites was also a first. Now I need to make a decision about fabric for my window seat and it’s not happening easily. About a year and a half ago my dad said I needed an inspiration pillow to make sure everything in each room worked together. I feeeeeeeel like maybe my pillow is the hardest pillow to match on the planet. So after going to three fabric stores in Portland, I’ve come home with these options. What do you think? I didn’t color correct any of these photos so they would look accurately colored in the space.

Now some photos with my inspiration pillow and the fabrics. And yes…. I taped the swatches to the window, but won’t that give me more accurate lighting?

3

You know what this process has done for me? Made me love my inspiration pillow EVEN more and wish that Home Depot had a color match computer for fabrics as well as paint. Why limit yourself Home Depot? Just think about it.

About a year ago I went the ReBuilding Center and found this glorious mess.

I went through as much as I could. And came out with all this!

I bought everything on this cart for $50! Great Deal….. with no place to go, so it has all sat in the garage for a year! SAD.  Finally, A year later, I’m considering using one of these boxes as a backsplash in the basement.

*Update* I still can’t make a decision. Weird. What else could I use?

So my coat closet has been floor-less. Here is the sad photo of the coat closet. My mom came through the house last year during the painting party and went on a carpet rampage. A lot of the old carpet was really old and dirty and she was having none of that. (Thanks Mom.) and so the coat closet has been without a floor for a full year.

I was at the ReBuilding Center a couple months back and saw some new yellow bamboo flooring. Just enough to cover this coat closet. So I paid a $1.00 for and it and it’s been hanging out in the garage. Since when I did this project in June. and  it was still raining in Portland I decided that was as good time as any to put the floor to work.

First step: removing the molding.

Safely removed molding:

Then, just like flooring with the oak flooring, I laid Rosin paper down.

then used a box cutter to cut down the paper to fit the space exactly:

So it looks like this:

Then cut the flooring to the right sizes.

This is the finished nailer that I borrowed and used. I just pushed the safety down and pulled the trigger and the nails went right in. Just make sure you don’t make a solid line of nails because that will look funny. You want to make sure the nails appear to be inserted randomly. Also, since it’s tongue and groove you don’t need too many nails, it should stay pretty well together.

Some of the nails didn’t go in all the way because I had to hold the nailer in a wonky position close to the wall.

When this happened, I used the tool shown below and the hammer to hammer the nails flush with the floor.

Just like with the oak flooring in the office – I used a “waste” piece of flooring to hammer the flooring pieces into their spot before I nailed them in.

And then the process repeats itself…….

Until its all done. See that dark piece of bamboo in the corner? That’s because I was just a tiny bit short on the stack of $1.00 bamboo i got from the ReBuilding Center. Since it was such a small area I needed – I went to Home Depot and asked if they had any open boxes that they couldn’t sell – or even a piece that was damaged and they couldn’t sell. Turns out that if there is an open box with a piece or two missing – they can’t sell the box. So an employee and I walked through the aisles and found an open, partially raided dark bamboo box. He gave me the piece for free since they couldn’t sell the box anyway. I don’t turn down free – and who is going to see it anyway? It’s in the back corner of a coat closet – so I took it back and gave it a good home.

After I finished installing the flooring – the job is not done.

I am constantly trying to better air seal the house, so for this project I used a caulking gun,

and some caulk

to seal the spaces between the flooring and the wall.

I used this caulk because when Green Hammer came into the do air sealing – this is what they used – so it must be good.

Then I put on plastic gloves and a paper towel and ran my finger to make a smooth seal.

For those of you that haven’t seen this before. Here is how you properly take off a glove so you don’t get junk all over your clothes. Grab the bottom of the glove.

Pull the bottom of the glove up and over your fingers

Then when you take them off – they are inside out and all the sticky gunk stays inside the glove.

Since I had the finish nailer out anyway – I put up some white molding.

And here we are! All done!

This entire project cost me about $2.00. The Bamboo was free and $1.00, the caulk was from the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $1.00 and the gloves were left over from another project. I love flooring on a Greenstring!