Today marks week 6, and therefore the end, of the One Room Challenge. Did we finish? No. However, we are so super close. We’ve made tons of progress and have some decent “befores” and “almost afters” to show you. I really hope you will stop back by the blog in a week to see some wood floors actually laid down!!! Parker has taken off Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to get that started. It would be nice if he could finish in those three days, but I don’t think we are expecting that at all. I guess I am hoping for next Sunday to have the floors completely laid? That will allow us to start moving back into the 1st floor of the house. There will still be quite a bit of trim work to do, but we can put furniture back where it belongs and start living a little bit more of a normal life!

Let’s get to the exciting stuff! This week, Parker put mortar on the great-room hearth, filled all of the nail holes, and began sanding. He also laid the tile in the bathroom. I LOVE IT! If you follow me on facebook or instagram, you saw that we were second guessing the pattern we chose for the hexagon tile. There was a lot of white in the pattern, and I was worried it would always be dirty. I also knew that it wasn’t going to be the easiest tile job. We realized that we had just enough to lay all of the gray tiles in a random pattern (which is how they come on the sheet). This would get rid of all of the white tile and make the job a lot easier for Parker. In addition, most of our facebook and instagram responses voted for the random grays. In the end, though, we decided to stick with the original plan and do the pattern. Now that its all laid down, I am so glad we stuck with the plan. I think it looks awesome! I can’t imagine being happier with anything else. Here it is…drumroll……

Do you love it as much as I do!?!?! Nobody could argue that its not an improvement, that is for sure! I love that its a bit traditional and modern at the same time. Black and white hexagons are timeless, but these have a fresh twist. I love that the darkest color is not quite black. And my favorite thing about these is the matte texture. They aren’t shiny and have a bit of a sandpaper feel. I’ve never seen anything like these, so I love that!!

WE are totally done with the fireplace. A professional will take over from here to caulk and paint (if we can finally actually hire a painter). Here it is before paint

Its safe to say we are ready to be done with this project! It just keeps getting messier and messier in here, and its not a fun way to live. Parker still has his cough and still isn’t sleeping a whole lot. He finally has some medicine to hopefully help. But he is tired. He never usually gets this worn out during projects, but this one is just all consuming and SO. MUCH. WORK! When we did the kitchen renovation at our Broadripple house, we didn’t have kids. Now we have 3, including a baby. That makes a HUGE difference. The deck and mudroom and garage projects at this house were more manageable because we could still live in our normal spaces. This time we haven’t had access to our main living area, and on top of that, 3 full rooms of furniture had to be moved into other spaces in the house. So the places we do get to use are cramped with a bunch of extra stuff. I’ve almost forgotten that this isn’t going to go on forever. It just feels like our new annoying normal. All of our previous projects have been so worth it, so let’s hope we feel the same about this one! I love everything so far, and can’t wait to show you the finished product!

Here is all the major stuff we have left to do:

• Lay wood floors (starts tomorrow)
• Caulk and paint fireplace (hiring this part out)
• Trim out all doors and install baseboards (also need to paint them)
• Paint bathroom and put toilet and sink back in

I know its going to look great. Even though we aren’t done, I would say we got quite a bit done in 6 weeks when all is considered! I’d love some feedback! Let me know what you think!

Jalene