We had big plans to take a trip to Portland for our anniversary this year, but we decided since we are still without a real bathroom, we should be all adult and take care of that and some other things first. So, I took a week off of work to tackle the lingering projects that we simply haven't had time to get to and/or wanted because we've been enjoying our summer!

My main goal was to get through the "sunroom" (aka dining room). It's easily the most tedious project in the house because I decided to paint all of the vinyl windows from a dirty beige to a white....which took like, FOREVER. I slowly picked away at it on weeknights and pray that I would eventually reach the end. We also experimented with a flooring that ended up being hell on earth, but more on that in a minute.

Here is when we bought the house:

And progress...carpet was the first to go.

...and here is when we lived in this 300 square foot space for a month+ :

...and when we would cage Frank while the floors were being done:

Remember my reference to the disastrous flooring? Here is the short version. We looked into all sorts of flooring options and really weren't thrilled with any of them. Some of the troubles we were having was that this opens to our kitchen/nook area and the floors are wood. I knew I didn't want tile for various reasons, cork or laminate was out, hardwood floors was going to be over our budget, but we did LOVE the look of concrete. After some research, I stumbled upon people using the Ardex Feather Finish which quite frankly had a lot of mixed reviews. Some loved it and others really, really hated it. I can see where people who did this on countertops would melt into a puddle of tears because it IS NOT a good material if it gets wet. Our dog peed on this before we put the seal on it and it turned into crackly bubbles. He survived, though.

The positive: You can lay it over a subfloor, it's somewhat flexible, it's supposedly durable, it does look like concrete, and it's cheap. We did about 300 squarefeet for about $250 with the primer and sealer.

Before I get to the negatives....I should preface this by saying that this product is not intended to be for a finished floor, so my frustrations stem from having to make it become something that it's not.

First, it would help if you had some experience with laying concrete [Insert dad here]. The bag says it covers 300 square feet. It does not. I think we did 11 bags mostly because it dries SO quickly in the bucket that you can't use it all. It's super thin, so it's suppose to be flexible with the subfloor...but time will tell, I suppose. While it does look like concrete when it dries....the color is really light (like a powdery gray).

Fast forward to having the last coat of the concrete on and then a minor sanding disaster which caused me to create my own mix and brush the entire floor on by hand. Looked great until I decided that I hated the color. Solution? Concrete stain. Which kinda worked until it dried and looked like we should have skipped all the work we just did and just paint the darn floors.

I slept on it. Still hated it. Then decided to sand the entire thing back down. By hand. This time I put the stain on by hand (with a rag) rather than with a roller. This allowed me to make some natural looking concrete streaks. I then mixed a charcoal paint in the stain so that it was a little darker and put it into a spray bottle and lightly sprayed the floors to get a speckled look. It seemed to work!

We then used a concrete sealer to finish it off!

And since my husband is awesome, he surprised me with a weekend in Chicago for our anniversary halfway through staycation! It was a much needed getaway and we had a blast.

Then, it was back to the gridstone on these darn windows! I finished painting them and my sister was her awesomely helpful self and came over on a rainy day to help me scrape the excess paint off the glass. I really love how bright everything feels now, so it was worth it. You can see what color they use to be in this picture:

And the very latest! We still need to finish up some details, decide on a light or fan, add the trim and pick out our dining room furniture! So, a ways to go, but I'm happy to not have to look at the purple/dust mess anymore. It's the little things.

Staycation Progress