As some of you know, Marc and I attempted to refinish some of our hardwood floors ourselves.  This was quite the task and took over a year for us to work on, mostly due to my work schedule and Marc's travel schedule.  Now we can say that the floor is finished, however it took a different turn that we expected.  Just as a reminder, this is what the room looked like BEFORE...

Don't you love the light fixture, carpet color and drapes?  We HAD to fix this!  So we started with carpet....

There was not only a layer of carpet and carpet pad but also this HORRIBLE plastic (linoleum-like) layer with felt backing that was GLUED to the hardwoods!  We finally got the carpet up (it was gross) and were left with this below:

It took use a long time to figure out how to remove this horrible layer.  We tried glue removers, strippers, and NOTHING worked, so we were left to scrape it off.  Of note, we did have the felt and glue tested for asbestos before we got too into the job.  Fortunately, they were both negative!

It took WEEKS to get this stuff off.  It was a great way to let off steam after a long day; however, it did result in some floor damage, which we attempted to cover up or sand out.

We had to sand and sand the floors to get all of the glue off and to get down to a stainable layer of wood.  We just used a belt sander, which is tough to use.  I can't even remember how many different grit types we had to use, but it was quite a bit.  Marc did all the sanding, I did all the vacuuming.  Then I got to do all the staining because Marc was in London by the time we finally got to the staining point (yes, it took from about August 2011 to January 2012 to get to this point).

This was after 2 coats of stain, which we had to do to cover up all the imperfections in the floor.  It looked pretty good and then the polyurethane came.  First coat of polyurethane looked great, then we had to sand that. That's when things started to not look so good.  In the daylight there was this white film that was pretty inconsistent.  We didn't know what to do about it.  Reading some about it, maybe it was too humid when we did the application?  Who knows.  We did decide to have the floor in what is to be the nursery refinished too before that furniture came in, and given that I am not much help in my bed rest state (not that I would want to do any floor staining in pregnancy anyway), we decided to hire professionals.  Best decision we could have made!  They did 3 bedrooms and they now look fantastic and took 1 full day + 2 days of maybe 2 hours of work (polyurethane application that had to dry between coats).

These guys got all the imperfections out of the floor and it now looks wonderful.  We were so impressed with their work.  Below is a picture after the first application of polyurethane, which isn't dry, so it looks very shiny!

We (meaning Marc) still has to get the quarter round back down and then we will be ready to hang curtains and move into this room with our new bedding to prepare for renovations to the back of the house!  Will post with completed pics soon!

UPDATES

As many of you know, Marc and I are expecting our very first little one this November.  We were a little bit late to announce it, just because we were extra cautious, and as a result, I never blogged about it due to the late announcement and because we've been so busy.  Now, however, I am on bed rest so I do have a little bit more time than I did while I was in the NICU and on inpatient peds!  :)

We do know that we are having a BOY!  No official name yet, but we are working on it and certainly need to decide soon.  I am 35 weeks 4 days today and he is a big fella (consistently measuring over 2 weeks ahead of schedule)!  Due to some of my health problems and risk for baby being growth restricted because of them, I had very regular ultrasounds to be sure he is growing normally.  Here is one of my favorite pictures from our 20 week ultrasound (sucking his thumb):

Since our 20 week ultrasound, he hasn't been super cooperative and won't let us get a good profile picture!  

They put me on bed rest on Sept 26th, which was about 33 weeks and 3 days for me.  It hasn't been very fun.  It's hard to go from working really long (sometimes 80 hour weeks and a few 28 hour shifts), to sitting or lying on the couch all day.  It also bought me twice weekly doctors appointments and 2 injections of steroids for baby's lung development.  Although going to the doctor (and driving 70 miles to Mayo) is not fun to do twice a week, it does give me SOMETHING to break up the long days!  My mom was here for most of the week last week since Marc was out of town for work.  It was so nice to have her here and she really got a lot done and ready for our little guy's arrival.

Because we were so late with things, the crib and bedding still aren't in, and probably won't arrive until close to our due date, but I will try to make a post about the nursery soon.  We do have a chair for the nursery and have gotten the rug, curtains and changing table.  Lots to do still, which makes bed rest all the more tough--knowing I can't work on things but yet having all the time in the world to do it.

Now that I have more time (at least until the baby comes), I will try to blog a bit more.  We will have more baby stuff I am sure along with home renovation updates!

Thanks for reading!