Hi there! I'm Mary. I'm just your average working girl, slowly making our current fixer-upper our "dream home" - one DIY project at a time.
That studmuffin below is my husband, J Dawg Justin. We live together in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan; the town I grew up in and love. I bought my first house in 2011 (you can see a tour of that house here), and we sold it to buy our fixer-upper ranch in suburbia in 2014.
The hubs hails from Southern Illinois and his good 'ol southern charm whisked me off my feet in 2011. We got hitched after 3 years of blissful togetherness (you can read about our engagement story here), and now we are building a life together!
Justin and I adopted our miniature dachshund, Joe Louis, in 2012 - and he's quite possibly the worst dachshund ever. Whether it's stealing a yummy pen, unraveling the ball of jute twine or grabbing dinner from the kitchen table, he's always up to no good. He definitely keeps us on our toes, but we love him and his stubby little legs.
Most of our days revolve around our careers, chasing around a crazy dog, and my true passion - building and creating! I love DIY projects and I always have a few going at the same time. This mostly happens during the sports season (Justin works long hours from September - April) as it gives me plenty of time to find new projects. While we don't share the same fondness for football and design, we have a knack for creating beautiful things together. We love to travel, eat, enjoy the outdoors, cook, laugh, and spend time with friends...among other things but this is what we are often doing when I'm not in the middle of a project and there isn't a game on (is there ever not a game on?!?).
This is a diary of our adventures, creating our dream home, DIY projects and everything in between. We are enjoying this journey in life - and hope you enjoy reading about it.
I will be doing most of the writing, but we are both excited to begin this adventure and are looking forward to sharing our lives - but mostly, we are hoping that you will share yours with us as well!
xoxo,
Mary
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteWe are going through a floor refinishing project like yours and are debating over the same stain choices. We have heart pine floors that have a large amount of natural red undertones.
Would you do anything different looking back at it or are you 100% happy with the dark walnut? Did you go with oil poly? We tried water based on one of our bedrooms and found it was too 'flat' and sterile looking.
Thanks!
David
Hi David,
DeleteI don't have any experience with staining heart pine flooring, but I am very happy with the dark walnut stain on my red oak. There seems to be a good amount of ash undertones in Dark Walnut to reduce the redness in the floorboards if that's what you're looking to do. Dark Walnut is a really great stain! It's not too dark, and it still allows the beautiful grain of the wood to stand out.
The poly I used is water based. We used two coats of the semi-gloss. What finish sheen did you try? I might recommend even trying the gloss finish before your rule out a water based poly. I'm working on a pine coffee table right now (stained in dark walnut), and I am really happy with the gloss myself. It's not near as "shiny" as I had expected.
I hope this was helpful! Let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck in your floor refinishing!