A week ago today Caleb and I became homeowners! Since then, every spare second of our time has been spent working to get the house move-in ready. The last owners were unfortunately not very up on maintaining things, and they owned three cats. (We’ve probably vacuumed up about eight.)

The first thing we did was rip out the carpets so our vacuum would survive to live a good long life. Underneath are original hardwood floors that I am in love with – it’s been too long since I walked on wood every day! After this the weekend was spent tearing up tack strips, ripping out nails and staples from the floor, and taking every screw, anchor, nail, staple, and piece of scotch tape off the walls. The fun part came Tuesday when I spent twelve hours sanding every surface in the house – except the floors. Walls, baseboards, quarter-round, doors, trim, and window sills are now all covered with a fine dust that means after a little vacuuming they will be prepped to paint!

So here’s some photos of the worst it gets, folks. From here on out, our busy hours will be spent filling, priming, painting, and improving!

Living Room

Guest Room

Bathroom

Library

Upstairs hallway

Master bedrom

 

The one surface we haven’t sanded yet – the floors – will be waiting for us and a rented drum sander this weekend. That’s right, we’re refinishing all of these floors. And the end results will be be-a-u-tiful.

P.S. – Since this post was written, we’ve done a lot more sanding (this post title is so true) that got us some floors that are even prettier than we hoped!

Sand is a Verb