Room Updates... Finally!

Happy Friday!! I am finally re-emerging from the depths of remodeling hell and thought I'd share the latest and greatest from the living room/dining room/foyer makeover. It just may go down in history as the slowest project on the blogsphere.  If you need a refresher on what the heck we're even doing, you can read about it here, here, here, here and here. It's been a long process, but the floors are finally installed on the main floor.

The stairs are a different (and long) story...

As with every project, we hit a bit of a roadblock. The treads were refinished, but there was one piece of wood that almost cost me $7,000. Like I said, it's a long story.

Here's the abbreviated version of what we were dealing with:

Stair treads are red oak.

New floor is maple.

Stair landing was supposed to be finished in the new maple flooring.

Annoying piece of oak wood was 1/4" lower than new maple flooring.

Annoying piece of oak could not be removed.

Landing would look funky with this one annoying piece of wood not matching and not at same height.

Called stair expert.

Stair expert said he couldn't remove the annoying piece of wood without removing the entire handrail, and oh by the way, both staircases are not to code and should be replaced to the tune of $7,000.

Code schmode! I'm not shelling out $7,000.

Lose an entire night's sleep, but come up with a brilliant solution. (Okay, so maybe it's not brilliant, but it saves me $7,000.)

Plan: order new red oak in the same height as annoying piece of wood to use on landing. Have it sanded and stained to match stair treads. Remove spindles from annoying piece of wood so that it can also be sanded and stained to match.

Not sure that was "abbreviated," but it's the best I could do :) 

I want to thank all of you who weighed in on my grasscloth wallpaper dilemma. I so appreciate all the comments and e-mails. I apologize if I didn't respond to everyone. P.Daddy was out of town, there were a gazillion school projects, games and practices... you know the drill... and people in and out working on the floors... blogging had to take a backseat.

I laughed when a few of you wrote to me about this bedroom on House of Turquoise. I had seen that room too, and the first thing I noticed was that the grasscloth had some funky color variation like mine. It's so nice to know I'm not alone!

I'll fill you in on the grasscloth decision later. I think I've bored you enough for now :)

And, in case I haven't said it lately, I so appreciate all of you who take the time to read my little ole blog. I can't believe there are 300 people crazy kind enough to follow my chaos! You're the best!!