Living Room - Before

I should probably title the post "Watch Your Step!"  Our front door opens directly into the living room (we're not cool enough to have a foyer), so the hole in the floor was pretty obvious to anyone who stopped by to say hello.  I'm sure that we didn't make the problem more obvious when we'd say, "Come on in and watch out for the giant hole in the floor."  We really didn't want anyone to get hurt, so we figured that we'd better fix it.  Here is a peek at what we were dealing with:

Yeah, it was a bit of a hazard, but an easy fix.  You know what the worst part was?  When we took out pieces of floor to expose all of the affected subfloor we could tell where they'd patched the subfloor and the floor planks before.  Seriously... you can't fix just the damage; you've got the fix the problem!  TBD's buddy is a floor guy, so once we fixed the subfloor he handled the hardwood repair for us.

I was pretty excited about the 15 lite door that the renters installed to divide the den from the living room; it's agreat way to separate the space without closing them off completely.  I wasn't quite as excited about the mini blinds.  The handrail in the other stairwell left a little to be desired too.  I am of the opinion that the handrail should run the length of the stairs.

We had one other quirky design element to contend with.  The picture is probably hard to see, but look closely and you'll see the texture that was the envy of the neighbors in 1994.  It was put on the wall to cover a bad patch job.  The patch filled in the hole left in the wall when a window was removed (when my parents bought the house).  You'd think that the window would have been removed when the garage was added.  I guess the previous owners liked to be able to check on their tools/car without opening the door; how convienent!