Master Bedroom Update and How I Refinished The Floors

Just wanted to give you guys a little update on our bedroom! We are so close to being done! I just finished the last section of the floors and as soon as the polyurethane is dry we can do all of the last finishing touches and move in!

The above picture is of the floors before I stained them. These floors were in really good condition and had definitely been stained at one point in their history but there wasn't any sort of sealer remaining on them. I chose not to sand these floors because I didn't want to loose all of their gorgeous patina and because I knew that they were so porous they would take the stain without sanding first. Really all I was looking to do was richen them. After scrubbing them many times to remove all of the dust and debris from the reno work I applied one coat of Minwax's Dark Walnut (same that I used for the overhead beams) with a rag as seen below. When staining I work in rows of 3 or 4 to insure that I have complete control over the amount of stain and so that it's not drying faster than I can work. I really wanted it to saturate the floors so I applied it pretty heavily and did not do any dry back wiping.

Once the stain was completely dry I applied 2 coats of water based polyurethane with a brush. This was my first time using water based polyurethane and I wanted to give it a try for comparison to oil based polyurethane which is what I usually use. A lot of people have warned me that it doesn't hold up well but I wanted to see for myself. Our bedroom is the only room upstairs so it won't be a high traffic area so I thought it was a good room to try it in. It definitely goes on very easily and your brush strokes go away immediately unlike with oil based polys where your brush stroke shows forever if you mess up. Over time I will let you guys know how the water based poly holds up to washings. It definitely seems like it going to look less shiny than an oil based semi-gloss poly does when dry and that is what I wanted for this room opposed to the dining room where I wanted the floors really shiny.

Another really exciting thing that we got done over the weekend was hanging this big old cupboard in the bedroom. I bought it years ago at the Springfield, Ohio Antique Show for this exact purpose. It waited patiently in our garage all these years until finally the other night we were able to hang it!

The inside was really gross (if you watched my Instagram stories you saw the before) so I gave it a good scrub and then painted it Behr's Cottage White  (one of my favorite go to whites) to match the original paint on the outside of the cupboard.

I am going to use this beauty to hold all of my smaller fabric remnants and sewing notions. This corner of our bedroom is going to be my sewing area and I am so excited!

We just have to finish up things like putting the base boards back down and some trim pieces here and there and then we can move our furniture in! I am so excited that I am going to have a pretty bedroom after 9 years of waiting and planning!

Can't wait to share all of the little finishing details with you guys!!