the florida room transformation

So, I've been a little late with this reveal. So much going on I haven't had time to put a post together. It's not surprising tw wanted to make this room more comfortable since most of our time is spent here. I can't find another picture of the Florida room before its major transformation, mainly because it was not photo-worthy.

Not so good, huh? I promise there were no real furniture pieces you missed. I think the only thing that stayed in the room was the couch. Anyway, here's what eight weeks of work can do for a room:

We started with paint:

Notice the paneling & brick (there's drywall on the back wall too. Fun! Can you tell this was an addition?) Then, tw decided he hated the floor. I really love terrazzo (especially with the Florida heat), but this white-ish terrazzo was stained and we knew from previous experience that no amount of buffing would make the floors look less than dingy white. So we looked at oodles of samples. Tile, wood, carpet. We even considered painting.

Before putting in a floor, I convinced tw to at least ask our carpenter neighbor Robb (contact info upon request. He really was *amazing* to work with) how hard it would be to take out the fake fireplace (yes, it's fake. Notice the non-chimney). Robb came over and estimated it would take three hours. It was out in one and a half, with no real dust to speak of (told you he's amazing).

tw is recycling the fireplace bricks as edging for the new patio he's now working on outside the kitchen. Yay, but now there's a hole in the wall. Just grab more wood, right? Um, not so easy. Since the paneling was original to the 1950s room, it's no longer just milled anywhere. tw searched high and low for this particular pattern (who knew wood had patterns?) until he finally found a mill willing to do enough to replace the wall for a reasonable amount of money. While he researched, found, and waited for it to be shipped from North Carolina, we put in the new floor. Click and lock bamboo. Gorgeous!

We worked for an entire day with Robb to put this in, and he spent the next day cutting the doorframe pieces and placing the trim moulding. Then we prepped for the new wall by ripping out the old one and adding insulation (there was NONE in this room before).

Finally, it came in and he installed it in hours. tw spent the next day painting while I feverishly finished sewing.

We stayed up until 2am putting everything back into the room.

It was a great experience to transform a whole room so completely. Tim & I are looking at houses in St. Pete in need of serious need of renovation, and this project gives me the confidence that I can do this to any house. I'll do a separate post that shows the entire room section by section, since this is already so photo heavy.