The first floor of the reno was a lot more hectic, but luckily the second floor went much smoother, sort of… I started off with our staircase. It was an all oak stair case that really wasn’t my style. It wasn’t in the budget to start from scratch so I decided I was going to sand and stain the stairs a darker color. Well when I went to stain them, the color didn’t take anywhere near as dark as I had envisioned. Even after 3 coats… It was a time consuming project that turned into a bigger pain than I had anticipated. So I ditched the stain and decided I was going to paint them instead. I decided on a really pretty dark brown with a gray undertone for the railing and then white for the spindles. It literally took me 24 hours to paint the stairs by myself. I decided during those long 24 hours that hell is actually painting spindles for an eternity. It was painfully boring. And to make matters worse, we hadn’t gotten our internet or cable yet so I only had my iPhone to listen to music. Well that didn’t last long. About a week in that month I had already used up 90% of my data because I don’t keep music on my phone so most of those painting days were done in silence. (Yes it could make you go crazy! Lol #firstworldproblems)

About a month and a half into the renovations Brian started his new job while I stayed at home to finish more of the projects. You get a lot of thinking done in a house by yourself with no music or tv and lots of paint! But during that time I dreamed up of how our house would look once it was finished and all the memories we would make together in the years to come. It was enough to keep me motivated!

Other projects included painting all of the oak trim and the fireplace white (also awful projects LOL), filling nail holes, (yep as boring as it sounds!), and lots of clean up but it was all worth it because we have made our house a home and more importantly it’s ours. We have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into that house and it feels so good to see our hard work paid off.  

Take a look at the after pictures below from our renovation and feel free to leave a comment! Did you tackle your own home renovation? What did you feel was most rewarding once your renovation was complete?