Instead of wedding crafting...

I have been refinishing my floors with my fiance. Chris is trying to fix up my house so it is less ghetto when my parents have to sell it. (I rent from my parents and I absolutely LOVE my house, but it *is* ghetto.) Sad. I don't want it to be sold, but sometimes in life we have to do things we don't want to do, or so I'm told. It is my grandmother's house where my entire family grew up, so there are a lot of memories there. Unfortunately, my grandma and Gunnar (step-grandpa) renovated the house in 1980. Yes. Ew. They did lots of bad things, including carpeting over beautiful 100+ year old hardwoods. But, we tore out the carpet and refinished the hardwoods! Here are some floor before and afters...while not perfect, the improvement is amazing! Yay! So much prettier! (Please excuse the terrible photos. I'm not photographer, and taking decent pictures of a floor is exceedingly difficult, so I discovered!)

Dining Room Before:

And After:

World's Ugliest Tile(TM) in the Hallway:

Aaaand after:

There used to be some built in shelves with leaded glass doors, but my grandparent's removed those (*sigh*) and we were left with this mess:

But after refinishing, it's hardly noticeable(now that doesn't mean that I don't want to have Chris rebuild the built-ins. I'd love for the house to have some of its original charm back.):

We also did the living room, for the record:


We still have to buy/stain/install baseboards and new doorway thresholds, but the improvement is unbelievable. Oh, and clearly we'll need to repaint or at the very least touch up the walls. The walls were a serious casualty of this process. And, just so you know, I never want to undertake this process again! (Did I mention there are still 2 bedrooms waiting to be refinished. Ugh.)

Now if only I can con someone into helping Chris put all my furniture back...I'd really like to have my house back (and cleaned - ack!) so that I can get a move on with some crafts! I feel so behind!