In our den, we have a sizable coat closet with two shutter doors. The knob on the left door fell off and got lost some tie ago, and the remaining knob was pretty plain looking, so we figured we’d put some fancier knobs on this closet since we spend so much time in the den.

Here’s the closet before:

Taking off the remaining door knob and the screw left in the other door was just a matter of taking out screws. This involved almost getting into the closet to get to the screw heads.

After I got both the old screws out. I had to screw in the new knobs. The threads on the new door knobs were a little larger than the holes in the doors, and the new knob screws didn’t have slots for screwdrivers, so I had to screw them in by holding onto the heads with pliers. This took some time.

After the screws were all the way in, I threaded nuts on the back side to keep them in place.

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s definitely an improvement. Next, we’ll get a few more knobs and put them in some closets we have in the back addition of our house.

I’m the queen of propping. We have a mirror propped on our mantel, a few small framed prints propped on speakers and media cases, a large painting propped on our bedroom dresser, and the list goes on. Some propping is okay, but lazy propping is not.

We also have quite a few items we keep meaning to frame–we like to buy mementos from our travels to hang in the paneling room, hoping we will one day have a room full of our trips together. So far, we’ve collected a Jamie Hayes’s print from New Orleans, some notecards we got from a street artist in New York, an embroidered linen from our honeymoon in Greece, and a few other odds and ends. Not a single one has been framed much less hung. Not a one. Our travel-memorabilia room looks like this (can you find the three propped items?).

This weekend we decided to do something about it. We were fortunate enough to find original blueprints for our house when we moved in and have had plans to frame them but, as always, never quite made it the frame shop. So Saturday, we set out for the local framer with blue prints in hand. We also had the blueprint for the addition and figured we may as well take it too.

When we got there, we decided to frame one of the two blueprints from the original house and the blueprint for the addition. (We figure we can frame the second original print later if we want.) We chose a simple wood frame about an inch thick and a protective glass that will keep the print from fading in the sunlight. None of the prints are in pristine condition–coffee stains, paint splotches, pencil markings, stamps noting Vetrans Administration receipt, etc.–so we didn’t go with anything super fancy. Regardless, I think they’re going to look amazing, and it will be neat to have pieces of our home’s history on the walls.

For those of you who like numbers, we got a 15% discount because we work in education, so the grand total for both framing projects was $183 and some cents. Not bad, considering we’re framing large, oddly shaped prints and are getting fancy glass. This was my first professional framing experience, and I was expecting a much heftier price tag. I was thrilled to get them both under $200.

I haven’t gotten the call that they’re ready yet, but as soon as I do, we’ll pick ‘em up and get ‘em on the wall ASAP, to avoid my lazy propping habit, of course. Then we’ll be back with a report on our not-so-naked walls. We’re getting there, folks. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

The paneling room, as its name suggests, has lots of wood in it. We have real, 1950s-era heart-of-pine paneling. It’s starting to grow on me and gives the room some charm, so we opted not to paint it. (Although I’m starting to rethink my decision and may choose to lighten it up one day.) Because of that decision, we couldn’t replace the carpet with hardwood because that would just be entirely too much wood in one room. So our choices were tile, linoleum, or carpet. (But if we lighten it, a.k.a. paint it, I might be able to add hardwood at some point. Yay!)

After thinking about the various options for weeks, we decided on carpet tiles from FLOR because they are reasonably priced, versatile, and easy to install. If you haven’t heard of FLOR before, you’re missing out. (After reading this post, you should take a gander at the fabulous options they have.) First, they have an amazing selection of carpet tiles–much better than any other selection I found at home-improvement stores or online outlets. Second, you can design your floor on the FLOR Web site, and they tell you exactly how many of each tile to order. Last, if you get tired of the look, you can change it up, move part of it to another room, or send the tiles back to FLOR for recycling. Double last, if you spill red wine, etc., you just have to replace one tile, not an entire carpet. I’m not a paid spokesperson for the company, so I’ll stop, but suffice to say–I’m a big fan of FLOR.

Here is the process we used to replace our floor:

We first removed all furniture from the room, so we could cut the original carpet into manageable pieces to haul out. Here’s the official before picture.

We cut strips about 3 ft. wide from one wall to the other, rolled up the strips, and carried them to the road. Read here about how we learned our very first day as homeowners to cut carpet in small pieces (because it’s crazy heavy). Then we were left with this. (P.S. Notice the mid-length curtains left by the previous owner. Blech. Those will change in a later picture.)

 A layer of carpet padding. This was easy to pull up and light-weight enough to not have to cut into strips. We tried to roll, but more wadded, it up and took it to the road. That left us with this.

 Another layer of carpet. This picture doesn’t do it justice. It was hunter green and orange. Yep. We think it was circa 1970s. It was terrible trying to cut it up. Terrible. But we eventually got it up, rolled, and to the road with everything else. Which left us here.

 Removing the carpet tacking along the walls. This stuff is not fun to pull up, and if I can avoid it, I will never have it installed in my home. This was probably the most tedious work we did, but still not bad enough to pay someone. At this stage, we also found a second carpet pad (what my husand is kneeling on above), which we thought we could remove after removing the tacking. Just so we’re clear, the previous owner tacked carpet padding and carpet on top of another layer of carpet and padding. So if you’re keeping count, that’s four layers we’ve been through already.Okay, just wanted to get that out there. I set out to try to remove the second carpet pad.  After scraping for 10-15 minutes in one square-foot area, I removed this tiny amount of carpet padding and discovered this lovely linoleum floor.

 The carpet padding had been there so long and was so ferociously glued down that it had adhered to the linoleum completely. Also, why in the world would anyone have ever chosen this linoleum? It looks like it should be in an elementary school cafeteria. After a little more scraping, we decided to leave the carpet pad and linoleum and carpet-tile over it.

Final layer count: Five, but we think there may be a layer of linoleum under the one that is visible. Make the madness stop! Fact: We no longer step up to get in the den. Now, we just walk right in.

Back to the floor. I created this design on the FLOR Web site. Almost all FLOR tiles are 2 ft. square and range $6-25/tile. We chose some of the least expensive options and think they look great. The tiles are shipped with directions for creating your floor, adhesive “dots” to attach the corners of the tiles together, to prevent sliding, and directions for cutting the tiles for corners, closets, etc. We opted not to use the dots because we left the previous carpet pad, which we thought would keep them from sliding (more on that in a bit), and we found the tiles quite easy to cut for a perfect fit around corners and in the closet. Overall, we were quite happy with the finished product. The floor looks and smells wonderful, and the carpet fibers are very short and easy to clean. I highly recommend FLOR’s carpet tiles should you need a quick fix to an entire room or should you just want to create a rug for part of a room.

Here is our finished floor and the official after picture.

And one more, from Christmastime. Also, aren’t those floor-length curtains and new rod soooo much better than the icky curtains in the before picture? Found those at World Market a year and half ago and finally got them up on the wall. Procrastinate much?

See our redneck attempt at lights on the curtain rod? We’ve since replaced the couch, but we’ll get to that in another post.

Now, about those “dots.” After a few months getting used to us, Mr. FLOR has decided, to put it kindly, to come into his own. To put it unkindly, he’s shifty! The tiles have moved a little here and there, and that black carpet pad is showing in places. So, we’ve got a romantic weekend planned of correcting the tiles that are out of line and using the dots. We’ll be back next week with a report.