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Thursday, July 17, 2008

What were we thinking?

The flooring in our home has long been a source of frustration and discontent for both Don and I. The combination of hardward, poorly installed ceramic tile, vinyl, and carpet (often a mixture of two or more in the same room!) not only made the house look smaller and made arranging furniture difficult, it is just...plain...ugly. We carpeted downstairs earlier this year and the results were amazing. But like most home improvements, this only served to spotlight how horrendous the rest of the house looked. But now, due to the untimely yet profitable demise of our brick mailbox, which met the wrong end of a trash truck, we finally have some money to put towards redoing the floors.

It all started with a trip to Home Depot (or the Orange Store as Maria calls it) and a pallet of discontinued wood laminate flooring for 99 cents a sq. foot. We crunched the numbers and we had enough money. So early Saturday morning as I shuffled off to Hobby Lobby, Don and Zack began tearing out the ceramic tile in the dining room. I know many of you cringe at the idea of tearing out ceramic tile because it is the hot choice for flooring these days. Not when it's butt ugly. Not when the grout is 1/4" wide in some area and 1/2" wide in other. Certainly not when it cuts a path right through the middle of your living room. The demolition took most of the day and involved multiple trips to the orange store. It also resulted in a thick layer of dust throughout the entire upstairs living area. Upon my return from Hobby Lobby at 9:30 p.m., we spent the next 3 hours dusting. I even had to dust the loaf of bread sitting on the kitchen counter.

By Wednesday afternoon (keep in mind Don has a real job to do while chipping away at our flooring project) the dining room was done, minus the toe molding. It is a true masterpiece.

My window of opportunity for actually enjoying the floors was slammed shut that very same afternoon when Zack, his friend Joel, and Alex began moving the furniture from the living room into the dining room to begin phase two. I guess everyone hates that old floor and wants it out of here. Truth be told, the boys are hoping for a new TV once the renovation is done. Let me know if you want to come climb our money tree in the backyard. Anyway, my dining room now looks like this...

It's almost more than a person can take. As a result the girls and I found reasons to be gone from the house today while more demolition took place. Don gets smarter with every home improvement project and this time he put up plastic to help with the dust. This is what my entry way looks like...

The demolition is almost complete in the living room. Don also tore out the built-in cabinets that were dated and hindered furniture placement. Now the living room, and Don, look like this...

Poor thing. He's so tired. This is a BIG project. Hopefully floor installation will begin tomorrow. If there's a "fun" part to this project, that's it. Don says we'll have to wait awhile to do the hallways. Maybe it will be like child birth. With time he'll forget the pain and want to do it again. Or maybe not.

Simple stated: What were we thinking?

1 comments:

Benjamin said...

Ha ha...if you click the living room picture to make it large, you can see dust all over the lens. :)