Better get yourself a drink because this is going to be a loooong post!
It's been a minute since I last had a post about home renovations. John and I haven't done much to the house since we painted the entire thing when Roman was 6 months old. We've wanted to replace the flooring in the house since the day we moved in. Like most of the house, the flooring is stuck in the 70's and has seen better days.
The original plan was to replace the carpet in the bedrooms, living room and hallway with new carpet, and replace the linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms with laminate. We had a few companies come in and give us estimates for the carpet and we were stunned at the prices they were giving us. $5,000 was WAY more than we wanted to spend on carpet, especially when we still had the basement to contend with (which was going to be another $5,000 for carpet). I know a lot of people don't like carpet, but when you have a clumsy toddler and a baby that will soon be learning to crawl and walk, I really wanted carpet for the bounce factor.
I was planning on painting the dressers in our bedroom (post will come whenever it actually gets done), and I'm a bit of a paint snob (I only use Valspar because it's AMAZING!), so we all made the trip to Regina to pick up a couple cans from Lowes. Since we had already made they trip, and Roman was enjoying driving the car cart around, we decided to detour to the flooring section to see what they had. After petting all of the nice carpet samples, I follow John into the laminate section. I immediately found the exact laminate that I wanted for the bathrooms and kitchen. We had no intentions of purchasing flooring that day but as luck would have it, that flooring was on sale for $1.99/sq ft! So, our trip for two cans of paint turned into the purchase of enough laminate flooring to do the main floor and basement of the house. Eventually we will replace the carpet in the bedrooms with new carpet, but that will happen eventually.
The flooring we went with was allen & roth Provence Oak. It has a good amount of wood grain to it which we love. and it's the perfect taupe color. Not too grey, not too brown, so it can go with either cool or warm toned furniture and wall colors. I really wanted something that would grow with us and wouldn't clash with paint or furniture in 10 years, because we plan on keeping this flooring until the kids/animals destroy it, or are out of the house.
We decided to start with the basement because John could do a bit after work and on the weekends and it wouldn't disrupt daily life with the kids. Plus it was mainly bare concrete down there so it didn't involve much prep work. We piled all the furniture into what will eventually be the toy room and John started laying floor in the living room.
If you've ever laid click together laminate flooring then you know it isn't exactly a quiet job. We were extremely lucky, and surprised, that both kids slept right through all the hammering and sawing in the basement. John managed to get a lot done in the evenings the first week. Of course on the weekend John had a special helper. Roman was very excited to help install the new flooring. John helped him put on his "hard working pants" aka sweat pants, and they got to work. Roman actually stayed down there most of Saturday and was a great help at handing John boards and tools. He even got pretty good at taking measurements for John, problem was everything was "30 inches". Points for trying though!
I thought it would be fun to pack them a pic-nic lunch so they could eat at the "job site" just like real construction workers. It was by far the highlight of Roman's day. He carried the basket over to their lunch spot and proceeded to hand John his half of the lunch.
After the weekend, the living room and hallway in the basement were complete! I was a little leery about laminate in the basement because I thought it was going to be cold, but I was pleasantly surprised! It's actually warm enough that we can go down there without shoes and not freeze to death. It's amazing to now have all this usable space when before it was a place we tried to avoid. I can't wait for it all to be finished so the toys can leave the living room upstairs for good, and I can send the kids downstairs to play!
Now for the main floor. We knew this was going to be a lot more work, mostly because we had to rip up a ton of carpet, and it was going to send the entire house into chaos. We decided the best way to attack this area was to send Roman to Grandma and Grandpa's for the weekend. I would have loved to send Bianca too but I wasn't sure my parents were quite ready to have both of them, and Bianca is still a little finicky with feeding and sleeping.
As soon as John got home from work we started emptying out the living room. It was a good thing Roman wasn't home because his room ended up being the catch all for all the small décor items and all of his toys. You don't realize how much stuff you have until you lay it all out on the floor. We love our entertainment stand because it holds a ton of stuff but it also turns into a catch all from time to time. This particular stand is from
IKEA and is worth every penny if you're looking for an amazing storage solution.
With the living room cleared out, it was time for the dirty work; ripping up the carpet. I helped my parents rip up carpet in their house when we moved in, and I remember exactly how nasty that was, so I've been dreading this part all along. Like I said, I knew this was going to be a nasty job, but I had no idea this is what we would find. Under the carpet was a sand dune, literally! I had no idea there could be so much dirt underneath the carpet. Granted, the carpet has probably been here since the house was built in 1977, but who knew! The only thing worse than cleaning up all the dirt was pulling up all the staples. Whoever installed this carpet wanted to make sure it was never going to lift, even in a tornado.
With the carpet ripped up, I was pretty much out of work, so while John started to lay flooring I made a run to Macs for slurpees. Sugar always makes the work go faster. By this point John was on hour 17 and was starting to waiver. So once we finished our slurpees it was off to bed to get some rest before it started all over again in the morning. Can I also point out how amazing Bianca is. She slept through this entire ordeal and didn't wake up once!
Day two of the main floor started bright and early. Bianca is an early riser so John took full advantage, and started laying floor right after breakfast. He made sure to get the hallway in front of Bianca's room done pretty quickly so he wouldn't be hammering right outside her door while she was trying to sleep. Bianca and I did spend a good amount of time hiding out in her room while John was jig sawing around the registers and for some of the loud hammering, but she did get to hang out a bit and watch John work.
I was pretty surprised how fast the living room came together. John worked like a dog and by the end of day two the living room was finished and all the furniture, toys and decor was moved back in. He even managed to get a start on the kitchen. We had planned to work late into the night to get it done, but John's knees were hurting (understandably) and we had both had enough, so we shut everything down around 10pm. I think that's the average time of night that most parents turn into pumpkins.
Day three was filled with cursing, stomping, a few thrown boards, and eventually some new flooring. The last part of the kitchen and the hallway was a huge pain because it involved a lot of weird cuts. Not to mention John had to take all the doors off the hinges and trim them down because the flooring was just a little too high for the doors to work. Add in a couple closets, moving the fridge and stove, and you're sure to have one very happy renoing husband! Even with all those setbacks, John still managed to get almost all of it finished before Roman and my parents showed up that afternoon.
Roman was so excited about the new flooring. He went running though the house yelling "so cool!" and "pretty awesome!". My mom even prepped him for the change by explaining that he wasn't allowed to throw toys on the new floor because it would scratch. Yeah, that lasted all of a hot minute.
We still need to finish the bathrooms and closets upstairs, as well as the bathroom, storage room, office and playroom in the basement. I might post pictures of those rooms when they are finished, or I might just wait until we get the trim and baseboards up and show everything completely finished. Let me know which you'd prefer!
