Thursday, February 13, 2014

Really Random Thursday - a floor!!

We have icky, stained, shows-every-dog-hair beige carpet over most of the first floor of our house.  And where there's no carpet we have icky, waxed, scraped-through-in-places-and-burn-marks-in-other-places vinyl "tiles."  It's so discouraging to vacuum and scrub and vacuum and scrub, and yet the floor still looks dirty.

Needless to say, we have wanted (needed?) new floors since we bought the place.

Enter Lumber Liquidators.

We bought new laminate flooring (12 mm thick!  With a pad attached!) for the entire first floor, mid-stairway landing and second floor landing.  They were having a good sale with a nice financing option, so we decided to go for it.


We watch a lot of HGTV and DIY Network, so we're going to try installing it ourselves.  Yes, I know, we'll probably kill each other before the process is done, but the labor to install the floor would cost as much as the floor itself! 

And while we bought enough to do the kitchen floor, we're going to hold off on that part until we redo the whole kitchen. So that's one area of the house that won't be a disaster.  Although it'll probably be packed with stuff from the rest of the first floor...

I've thought about this a lot, and I think the steps involved will be:
1. Pop up quarter round molding around vinyl areas
2. Rip up carpet, carpet tacks and staples 
*Forgot one and too lazy to re-number: take out toilet and sink in half bath so floor can go in
3. Screw sub-floor down (it's only nailed down now and it's SO creaky!)
*Forgot another one: move outlet in the middle of the living room floor
4. Scrub baseboards
5. Paint baseboards
6. Trim up doorjambs so floor fits underneath
7. Install floor
8. All while trying not to kill each other
9. Take a week+ off to recover

Did I forget anything?  We really don't have a timeline for this project, but it's going to take more than a weekend for sure.  So for right now all the supplies are "acclimating" in our basement.


That's a lot of boxes!!
 
(These two photos are in the garage, as we had to hustle to unload and return the Home Depot truck we rented to transport it all home.  Everything's in the basement now.)

Anyone want to visit us in KY and have a floor-installing party?

Linking up with Really Random Thursday!

1 comment:

  1. Wood laminate flooring is the best, although I sure give you extra points for installing itself yourself! We are down to only one room with carpeting.

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