They say a bedroom should be your oasis. That you should feel calm and relaxed to sleep well. That wasn’t the case for Tj and I. Imagine a room with light colored carpet with two pups who loved to roll around up there, no matter how dirty their paws. It was so awful that we didn’t want to spend any more time in there than we had to. TJ and I never opened the blinds because that would just shed more light on how much we disliked it and we never made the bed. We knew when we purchased our home that we would redo the floors, but that’s been 7.5 years ago.

We are fortunate that we have my dad who helps, more manages our projects. He is the project manager who helped us redo our bathroom remodel a few years back (click here). In the middle of June I realized that I had vacation days that I needed to use or I would lose them. So jokingly I asked my dad if he had any time to help me redo our bedroom floors. To my surprise he moved a few things around and said he was available, because that’s what my dad does. I promised I would be there the entire time and help with as much as I could.

We knew the first step was removing the carpet to see what we were working with. Since TJ didn’t have vacation he was tasked with prep. He moved the furniture out of the room and removed the carpet. It’s always nerve wrecking to start a project because of the unknown. Most projects go over budget or take longer to finish. We anticipated having plywood under the carpet and putting down a laminate flooring. TJ and I had even picked out the laminate color and style that we were going to put down.

To our surprise when TJ started pulling up the carpet we noticed that there were beautiful hardwood floors that just needed to be restored to their original glory. This was my Joanna Gaines moment! I was smiling from ear to ear, texting my dad photos to see if they were salvageable and THEY WERE! Our week started by sanding the floors with a huge rented sander that shook your whole body. We had the bedroom sanded within 4 hours. Then we used a small hand sander and got close to the walls and in the corners. After that clean-up started, because you have to vacuum and wipe down all of the surfaces to get rid of dirt and dust for the poly.

It took us two whole long days to poly the floors. The first coat of poly took forever to soak in, like watching paint dry. The fumes from the poly were horrible and gave me a headache. I would recommend vacating the premises for anyone that is doing any sort of poly. The poly finally dried and I was able to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls and the ceiling. I painted trim and on day 5 we installed the trim. All that was left was moving the furniture back in, which is where TJ came in. We moved the furniture back in and knew that we wanted less. Less stuff on the dresses and in the closets so we did a huge purge. We want to continue living a minimalistic lifestyle. It’s great knowing our bedroom is minimalistic and how we start our day.

*We purchased the plants and had the pots on order when we took these before we left for Europe. The plants have since been potted and are still alive!