Micah's Room

Micah's room was the only bedroom with carpeting. We crossed our fingers and hoped that it would have the same wood underneath the carpet (in somewhat decent shape) so that we could refinish it with the other two floors. Either way, the carpet had to go. Once all of the former owner's stuff was gone and we got a closer look, we noticed that the closet (the door in the last picture there) only had carpet about halfway into it, followed by that same old wood in the other rooms. Score! We were nervous about whether the carpet had made this floor significantly worse than the other rooms, but it was definitely worth the risk.

The ceiling and walls needed a lot of work and repair, so Jason and Rachel spent a lot of time prepping this room for painting. We decided to paint the room before sanding the floors since #1 we needed an entire weekend to sand and #2 it was easier than moving a drop cloth around the room. Rachel painted the ceiling while Jason fixed some cracks in the wall. On a whim, Rachel suggested that we use the paint we purchased for the master bedroom's trim as the trim for Micah's room as well. It turned out great! As expected, we had to wait until all of the spackling was done, dry and sanded before we could prime those spots. And once the primer was dry, then we could get started on painting the walls. Rachel cut most of this room because I still was not qualified. I worked around the windows, but the ceiling trim was her responsibility. I worked on the green while she worked on the brown sections. Once Micah got too fussy though, I had to abandon ship, and Rachel almost always picked up my slack. We used every last drop of green in the bucket, but the room got painted.

We were now ready to remove the quarter round and pull up the carpet. We held our breath hoping that there was padding under the carpet (to give us some lee-way for cutting through the carpet) and that it would come up cleanly.

There was padding under the carpet, and it did easily lift. Unfortunately, Jason was convinced that since we were sanding down the floors that he didn't have to be careful with how deep he used his utility knife. I'll ruin the surprise now and tell you that after the hours of sanding, staining and polyurethaning the room, I can still see where he ran his knife to cut the carpet. Lesson learned? Probably not. It will be one of many flaws in our house that few people will notice without looking for. You might also notice that even this floor had the ghost of an area rug just like the other two rooms. We've heard numerous rationales for this, but none of them have completely convinced me yet. Either way, they're not as noticeable now.

The sanding process was long and painful, included a lot of arguing, but gave us a great looking floor.

Clearly the "before" picture.

This is after most of the sanding (and a lot of vacuuming) was done.

I cheated on the stain (as described in the "Spare Room"). The dirty rags are simply for show, since I only used them to wipe my hands off occasionally or wipe off a spot where I bumped the trim above that awful blue painters tape. At this point in the room, I snapped my foam brush's handle off but continued working anyway because we didn't have a spare brush.

We loved the color, but this "wet" look scared us quite a bit, especially since it lasted for more than 24 hours. I'm not sure if it's because of my experimental stain application process or the incredible humidity that we were dealing with at the time. You could wipe a cloth on it and not get anything transferred, so we think it was just the oil seeping out. We tried cleaning it off as much as we could. By this point, we were sick of the whole process and wanted it over with, so we went ahead and started to polyurethane. It looked a ton better even after the first coat was dry. After the third coat, we're very happy with this single coat of stain on this floor.

Once the floor was completed, all we had left to do was to pick away at some pealing ceiling paint (say that 3 times fast), patch it, prime it and paint it (all time consuming). Another lesson learned, move the drop cloth so that it is under you when painting a ceiling. After all of our hard work on the floors, Micah's now has polka dots of white on spots where the drop cloth didn't cover. I was able to pick off a lot of it, but some spots were just too much work to get the paint off. We'll figure out a solution later.

After a good sweeping (or two... or three), it's now finally ready for the furniture and wall decals. Micah is FINALLY going to have a nursery!