300 Down, 1,450 To Go

The couch we ordered from West Elm a few months ago is MIA. As in, it shipped somewhere on October 7th and then vanished into the atmosphere. I haven’t nagged the company too much about this–though I have inquired–because at the moment we have bigger things to sort out, like where a new couch is even going to go before we finish the living room floor.

The living room, which is presently mass storage, board sorting central, and our work at home office, is last on our list, even behind our master bedroom, and even after working all week on the floor installation, we know that it could take weeks for it to return to normal. As of today, we’re still only through most of the hallway and the nursery. Optimistically, with 300 square feet already installed, there’s still about 75% of the job ahead of us, around 1,450 sq. ft.. We’re already exhausted.

The spaces that we have done look incredible though. It took us all of Wednesday and Thursday to get through the nursery, even having racked the boards over the weekend. It’s going to be a pretty great space once I finish getting things set up, with shining reflective floors to complement the shiny birch crib that we picked out (thanks mom and dad). It’s nowhere near ready for a child, but at least I can set up the rocking chair and begin unpacking all of the clothing and toys I had packed away in big plastic bins during this project.

Julia’s room is fab too, our lofty goal being to finish it today and reassemble it this very weekend. I do finally have a plan devised to replace those awesome curtains, but the floors are more pressing so window treatments can wait.

Maple floors are, turns out, a kid’s dream, and they me back to when my Grandma would crochet all of her grandkids little slippers so that we could surf and slide all over her linoleum kitchen floor like it was our own ice rink, usually running and coasting to see who could slide furthest. In hindsight, right at this moment, I’m realizing that probably wasn’t the intent of why she made them for us, but we did sure love dancing and spinning around in those slick booties, and I can’t remember wearing them for any other reason. Our new long maple hallway is reminiscent of that; we’re all coasting around in socks because the floors are new, nearly finished, clean, and basically the greatest things ever.

It’s the type of progress I’m really enjoying documenting, so thank you all for the kind notes and comments about our progress so far. I hope that it’s inspiring, and please keep up the words of encouragement. It’s going to be a long few weeks!