Working in the latest coal mine

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Progress on the new place has nearly ground down to a complete stop but I will show you what I had managed to date.
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Office (before): This was the first room to eventually empty out. And since I needed an office and place for the computer as a priority, it was my first project. Note the four strange marks on the floor that form a square. These are from an old trunk with broken casters which rested at the foot of their bed. According to the half to three quarter inch deep gouges in the subfloor, it had been moved everyday to make the bed. It took almost an entire tub of Elmer's wood filler to fill the gouges back up to level and could only be done a little at a time in thin layers. The cleaning, prep and caulking needed before fresh paint was considerable to do a proper job. Although not my preferred window style, the windows were of a reasonable quality and now slide easily and lock after a thorough cleaning and maintenance session.
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Office (better): Although this rooms still needs proper window framing and trim and a chair rail in natural wood stains, it is comfortable enough for now. The vibrant gold on the top of the walls tells me that I have lost my old ability to judge a wall color from a small paint chip. I was looking for something in a very warm and creamy French vanilla - and this wasn't it! But close enough for now since I dread having to cut in a new top color. It felt so good to finally have an office space of my own again since so many pressing matters had been languishing in moving boxes. I'm STILL trying to catch up.

Note for the Katlady: Does the dark oak office chair look familiar? It is your dad's infamous GDAPC (butt-pinching chair) that he had fallen out of love with when the seat plank split and pinched him right proper.
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Guest Room (before): Here is what the eventual guest room looked like for a couple of months after buying the place. Apparently not a lot of packing progress occurred while I was coincidentally left stranded out at the Rat. Okay, as you can start to imagine, the place did not 'show well' while on the market. It saddens me that they left a lot of money on the table for lack of even rudimentary sprucing up but that ain't my problem. Even if they were not palaces, the houses I have sold in the past were always intriguing crowd pleasers, always surprising jaded realtors on getting a good or better than expected price in a quick turn-over time.
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Guest Room (better): Yes, Phlegmmy, one day hopefully soon, this will be the official guest room with an antique brass bed and some golden oak dressers. For now, it is home to the big Eastlake walnut bed until I can start on the main bedroom in the slightly bigger back room. It felt SOOO good to have a real bed after a few months of just the mattress on the floor of another room and my creaking knees thank me daily without fail. Also, Daisy the amazing hair throwing dog had decided that a mattress at dog level was simply divine but I was not as taken with that bed-share arrangment at all.
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Living Room (before): As you have probably guessed already, this was the state of the living room when I finally arrived. Mind you, I was grateful to see that our Chesterfield had been moved in and covered with heavy moving blankets (left side of photo). I realized just how important the moving blanket coverings were when I saw one of their Corgis hike its leg on my antique copper boiler stored off to one side, adding a little unwelcomed patina to the copper. Their cats might have committed other unmentionable affronts to the leather Chesterfield as well without the coverings. I slept on it for the first two nights until the burlap got very old. That's when Wayne helped me move enough of the heavy furniture in one room to make room for a mattress on the floor. Hardly the Ritz but a vast relative improvement.
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Living Room (better): Here is the room after I had managed to remove about one quarter of the heavily soiled carpet and deal with the critter urine affronts before giving the exposed sublfoor a quick coat of paint to seal in the past. Only a few of our furnishings are present until I finish removing the carpet entirely. I had wanted to have oak floors installed throughout but that might be fantasies too lofty unless the stock market recovers. So, in the meantime, wood filler and off-the-rack Wally World floor paint might have to make do. At least it is progress.


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