Summer Projects

I have a bunch of projects that I would like to finish this summer while the weather is nice. We don't have a garage, so once the snow comes (and boy will it come!) I won't be able to refinish any furniture.

Most of my projects are in our master bedroom/closet, but there are a few others (and a few on my honey-do list for before he goes) that would turn the condo we live in into a place I (we) love.

1. Refinishing Furniture

We have two pieces of furniture in our bedroom that either need to go, or need to change. Craig brought with him a blonde wood veneer wardrobe that sticks out like a sore thumb in our bedroom. The rest of our furniture is black, so I'd like to sand and paint it, and throw on some new hardware. Living with Lindsay has a great tutorial on the process here.

Another thing I'd like to refinish in our bedroom is the dress that we've got in our closet. Its at least a real wood, but the colour's still all wrong for us. My only concern about refinishing it as opposed to replacing it, is that the drawers are very shallow, so you can't stack much before it starts catching when you close it, and it's not deep enough to allow 2 stacks deep.

2. Flooring

We have carpeting and parquet wood flooring in our living room, kitchen and hallway respectively, and we'd like to replace both this summer.

The carpet is a very light creamy colour, which doesn't work for us and our dog. She's become occasionally incontinent as she's gotten older (she's 15), and there are a couple of resulting stains around. The parquet is really ugly despite the pictures (A) and it was not properly put down by the previous owners, so the individual rectangular tiles keep coming up (B).

3. Lastly, I'd like to recover the old, tired dog bed that's in our room, at least with some fabric that matches the room's decor. Along those same lines, I'd like to make/buy cheap some new covers for the furniture in our spare room.

Isn't that shameful? It's a work in progress.