Progress on the Money Pit

I am so happy with the most recent improvements to our beloved money pit.

The main focus of our annual one-room reno has been our front entrance - when I last wrote about it, we had a new front door, I had painted the wood panels, and we were looking into vinyl flooring.  We're slowly inching closer to completing this project, and it will definitely be done by Thanksgiving because we're hosting our families for dinner (this is going to be a close one because the Packers play at noon two of the three Sundays we have between now and Thanksgiving, and B's dad doesn't work on projects during the game or on Saturdays.  Cross your fingers we actually get this done on time!).

Two weekends ago, B and I went to Menards in search of flooring, and luck was on our side (for once).  The laminate that we wanted was on sale for about $20/box (Menards was having an 11% off rebate sale on top of the sale - score!).  We bought 5 boxes, and after using our rebate from the front door, we only ended up spending about $50 out of pocket.  That Sunday, B's dad came over to install the floors, and we lucked out again - we only needed 4 of the boxes to cover the 70 square feet of floor, so we were able to return a box, bringing our out of pocket price closer to $30.

Good-bye ugly brown medallions, Hello pretty new laminate!

A look at the room as it is now

Our happy dance over limiting our spending didn't last very long though, because we still needed to buy trim for all of the doors, windows, and around the floor, as well as drywall and mud to finish the walls of the closet (we took off the closet doors so we can have an open closet/nook area).  Rather than spending more, we opted to stick with the same paint color inside (our original plan was to paint it Mesa Taupe, one shade darker than the rest of the room and a bit more brown than gray), so that will help our budget a little bit.  I just hope we're left with enough paint leftover to paint the garage entryway as well.

Last weekend, B's dad installed some drywall in the closet and installed a new, bright white electrical outlet (to replace the ugly dark brown one).  We got less done than we were hoping to, so next weekend is going to be extra busy, and I have some homework to do in the meantime.  I get the pleasure of sanding and staining all of the trim for the room.  I'm nervous, I've never done any staining before - hopefully it turns out okay (and if it doesn't, I'm not going to finish it - I'll leave it for the pro).

Hopefully in a few weeks, I'll be sharing the (mostly) complete after pictures!