Living and Dining Room Floor Transformation

I've already spoken about the strange choice in carpeting that has been in this house several times on this blog. It's been a source of befuddlement for 5 years. Befuddlement... isn't that a great word??? Just saying it will make you happy. Even though technically it is kind of a negative word, in a sense. But if you forget about the meaning of the word and just say it, it is fun to say. Fun = happy.

Anyway, back to the carpet.

Cream colored carpet, to be exact.

Who would put cream colored carpet in a house?? Especially in a dining room?? A dining room, for Pete's sake! That's what boggles my mind the most... the dining room. It makes absolutely no logical sense. So you can imagine how awful these cream colored carpets were after 5 years of living. No amount of carpet cleaning would get them clean, and I cleaned them often, even resorting to having the professional carpet cleaners come in a couple times. Even they couldn't get the carpet stains out.

I would sit and daydream about having nice clean flooring. In a house I didn't even own yet at the time. But I would think about how nice this house would look with beautiful hard wood flooring, and since I can see the images in my mind so clearly it was soooo hard not to rip the carpets up right then and there! But at that time I couldn't. So I soothed the savage beast by gleefully pinning pins of wonderful gorgeous colonial homes on Pinterest. Makes logical sense, right? When you can't do something, simply torture yourself further by pinning pins on Pinterest.

So you can imagine how excited I was when we bought the house and I could actually rip these suckers out!

Here is a before shot of the dining room carpeting that was taken before I put the new chandelier up. The picture makes the carpet look nice here, but trust me, the stains were horrible and they drove me insane.

I forgot to get a before picture of the living room carpet... Big fail on my part. I guess I was just too excited about ripping the carpet out. That's my story and I'm sticking to it anyway. It wasn't at all because I simply forgot, per se.... It was just excitement! See how that works? One makes me sound motivated, the other makes me sound like an idiot. I will go with motivated. Motivated Moose. Yeah. :D

So here is a picture of the living room that was taken kind of awhile ago. Like 3 years ago or something.... Back when we had old furniture and not the nice new furniture we have now. But it was good comfy furniture.... I actually kind of miss that sectional sofa. It gave us so much sitting room in such a small room. But that couch doesn't hold a candle to the couch we have now. Anyway, I'm going off on a rabbit trail.... You can see that I used a rug to help cover the stains.

But back to the actual reason for this post. Ripping out carpets! :D

I grabbed my son and we set out pulling up carpet. His job was to take the carpet and put it outside by the curb for trash pick up the next day. The first thing we did was move the dining room furniture into the kitchen and then move the living room furniture into the now empty dining room. The living room carpet was the first to go.

(On a side note - putting the living room furniture in the dining room showed how amazing the wall color went with the furniture! It looked so good that I decided I was going to paint the living room the color I painted the kitchen and dining room. This of course means that I have decided to repaint the kitchen and dining room walls a new different color now. My husband rolled his eyes at me when I excitedly told him about this. He's thrilled about it; I just know it! Well, I'm excited about it anyway. He's just a party pooper.)

After yanking up a section of carpet I rolled over a 3 foot section and cut it to make disposal easier.

I then rolled up the carpet piece and taped it. My son then took it to the curb while I started cutting the next segment.

Goodbye, nasty ugly carpet!

In the next picture, Emma, one of our "rescue kittens" that isn't a kitten anymore, perched herself on the top of the tipped over couch in the dining room and kept an eye on our work.

After all of the carpet, padding, carpet nail strips, and staples were out in the living room we then put the living room furniture back in the living room to get started on the dining room. This was when my daughter took over for my son and she was in charge of taking the carpet segments out to the curb.

After the dining room carpet, padding, carpet nail strips, and staples were removed and cleared out I was beat. It was a lot of hard work and I was sooo sore. I was sore in places I didn't know I had places! More than that though, I was tired. My parents were awesome and brought over supper for the kids and I. Paul was out of town that day and couldn't be the gopher. He actually called them up and asked them if they could help me with that. So he's good too. :) Anyway, I was too beat to cook, so I was very thankful. I was actually even too tired to eat but I swallowed it down anyway.

The very next day Paul and I got started laying the new flooring, which was the same as the new hallway flooring - Shaw Resilient Matrix vinyl plank flooring in Resort Teak color. We were going to power through it to get it finished as soon as possible.

The above picture is where we stopped and smacked our heads for being stupid. We started on the opposite side of the floor before realizing that we were putting the flooring in backwards. Still doable, but not as easy. Plus we also then realized that if we continued that way we wouldn't be able to attach it to the edge of the new floor where we left off from the hallway and foyer. Lots of grumbling at this moment, but glad we caught it early and not halfway across the room. So we stopped, left it where it was, and then got to work on the other side of the room.

We also decided at this point that we wanted a thin padding under the floor because we also discovered the floor where the plywood met another piece of plywood wasn't completely level, which is not good for vinyl plank flooring. So off to the hardware store we went.

After laying the floor pad and flooring to the point of getting into the dining room we then had to work backwards to match it up with the kitchen linoleum. That was more difficult but it still went in rather easy.

The cats enjoyed watching us as we worked from the tipped over couch on the opposite side of the living room. Emma was lost watching the ceiling fan.... yeah, she's not the sharpest little kitty, but she's a good kitty. :D

We got halfway through the floor when we stopped for the night. We were both exhausted but determined to finish it the next day. My dad came over and helped as well and it went much faster with him there. And of course I forgot to get pictures of more progress. Motivated Moose, right?? Right! :D

So here's the finish of the flooring! Isn't it gorgeous? It's so much nicer than that nasty carpet!

We still have to add shoe molding but that will have to wait until another day.

And here are pictures after we put our furniture back in place.

A thousand times better! I love how easy it is to clean, and I love not seeing carpet stains anymore. I think the cats are having fun running and sliding all over it too, which cracks me up! I swear they are doing it on purpose to play.

The colonial look is starting to take shape! Next big project is finishing the kitchen cabinets. I've been working on painting the cabinets for about a month now. Paint, dry, flip. Paint, dry, flip... it takes a long time. But I won't get into that in this blog post. Just focus on that beautiful new flooring!

After the furniture was put back in place Paul asked me, "Does it look just how you envisioned it?"

"Yes, yes it does." :)

Hallway Floor Redo

This was when the fun really began with the whole renovation thing. This was the one thing that I was chomping at the bit to do because it drove me insane. Pulling out the nasty carpet in the hallway.

We might as well be real here. Real people deal with real problems, and real problems are often very messy and gross problems. Especially when those problems deal with kids or pets. And I know that there are a whole lot of other people out there who have had to deal with this as well. Perhaps this post will help someone else out there. So here's the raw honest truth of the matter.

This hallway was gross. The cats liked it in there, and I mean they really liked it in there, which drove me absolutely bananas. I don't know if there used to be cats in this house before us or not, and maybe the hallway used to be their favorite area in the house too, but the male cats were especially drawn to this area and there was nothing I could do to deter them. Believe me, I tried everything. 

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. I'm sure we lined the pockets of every pet odor remedy CEO in the country.

I may or may not have even resorted to laying down aluminum foil all over the floor. Cats are supposed to hate aluminum foil. Hate, despise, avoid at all costs, run away from... you get the picture. And one of our cats may or may not have even cared about the aluminum foil and even thought it was cool.

Stupid cat.

Yeah, we have a stupid cat. I truly think he is a few bricks short of a full load. Or maybe he just skips the load altogether. Either way, he loves whatever every cat is supposed to hate. And he has this vacant nothing-between-the-ears blank look in his eyes. He's just not right.

So anyway, I couldn't wait to pull this carpet up and get rid of it.  We're the type of people that give even the stupidest of cats a forever home, but I was at the end of my rope and near tears dealing with it. I had scrubbed and cleaned the area to the bone constantly and I was tired. I was so good at it that people couldn't smell the odor. But I knew it was still there because the cats kept going back to it. So one day when my husband took our son and his two friends out golfing I tore into that carpet with a vengeance.

I gathered up my supplies for the job and I yanked that carpet out like a mad woman, laughing an evil little laugh the entire time. Demolition never felt so good!

I have never done this before, but after watching a few YouTube videos I felt ready and equipped. Did you know that you can be an expert in anything after watching a few YouTube videos? Yup, just like staying at a Holiday Inn makes you smarter. Or something like that. Or maybe ripping up carpets is just super easy.

(It's just super easy, but don't let anyone else know. Let them think you are brilliant and a genius.) 

The carpet came up fast and then the padding came up almost just as easy. It's really a no-brainer. The tough part was dealing with all of those staples.

Because of my superior education through YouTube University I knew to buy these super cool neat pliers that have a crooked nose. I have no idea what it is called. To me they were the thingamajiggy that pulled the staples up easily. I didn't have to try and wedge them around the staples and figure out how to leverage them out. It was a grab and go thing. They were invaluable.

I also knew to buy a gallon of Kilz Max primer. This was the gallon of gold that was going to solve all of my problems with the cats. I covered the entire hallway and the bottom of the walls with this primer in 2 to 3 coats. I wasn't taking any chances or cutting any corners here.

It covered the smell (which was brought up with the carpet) immediately! The paint was dry when the boys came home from golfing and the only thing they could smell was paint. Glory Hallelujah! (Yes, this was definitely praise worthy.) This was also a surprise to them because I hadn't said I was going to pull out the carpet. My husband is a very patient man, that's all I have to say. :D

The next day we started laying the new flooring. My good kitty was very interested in the process. I think she was glad the carpet was up too. She was forever trying to "cover" the hallway with invisible kitty litter when it had the carpet in it. Yeah, she's not too smart either, but at least she is a good kitty!

We ended up going with Shaw Resilient vinyl flooring because it was waterproof and scratch resistant. We wanted something that was durable and could hold up to the cats and a bunch of kids running on it and still look like hardwood floor. We chose the Resort Teak color. It ended up matching the stair banister and posts perfectly. Score!

This flooring was very easy to lay down. The hardest parts were just getting the right measurements around the banister post and doorway molding.

The carpet on the stairway will eventually be ripped up too, but I'll be doing that later. Redoing stairs takes a lot of time and effort. No less than a month and I had promised my husband no more new projects until the ones I started get finished first. Like the kitchen. Hold on, stairs.... I'll get to you soon....I promise....

And here is the final finished hallway after I repainted the walls.

It looks a thousand times better! (Ignore the chest. We put it there until we got to work in the living and dining rooms.) We still have to put on the transition piece to the linoleum but that won't take much. The linoleum will also eventually be replaced with stone. We're hoping to do that next year. 

But the best part of this whole project?? I haven't had to clean up a mess since! We've had no problems with the cats at all! And it has been 3 weeks now since we finished this project and it has remained clean! Whatever was in this hallway just triggered them terribly. Kilz Max is AWESOME! I recommend it to anyone! And no, I wasn't asked to endorse them or anything. I highly doubt they even know my blog exists. I'm just one satisfied person. I'm one of those clean types of people. I like a clean house. This hallway was a huge thorn in my side and a great source of embarrassment to me. No more! Now my house feels clean as well as looks clean! And even though there was no risk of him losing it, Stupid Cat still has a forever home. He should be bowing at my feet and rubbing my legs with thankfulness. 

So if there is anyone out there struggling with pet issues like this, Kilz Max is amazing stuff. Make sure you get the Max. There are other types out there, but the Max is the one that covers all stains and odors. It's worth the money spent. Frankly, I would have paid twice as much for it. It's that good. 

Next post will be about ripping out the dining and living room carpets. Until then, toodles!

A Bit of Yard Work Mixed In

The yard has needed a bit of sprucing up, yet it's not really what you would call a full project right now.

The yard work has been quite exhausting even though we haven't done a ton of it. This summer we aren't putting a lot of effort into the yard, though we have a lot of plans for it. Plans for next summer. When we aren't doing a whole lot of home renovations on the inside. But there have been a lot of little things that have needed care, such as over grown tree limbs and removing unwanted items.

The first item on our list were the backyard trees. The limbs were beginning to hang so low we had to stoop under them to mow the lawn. Plus they cut out a lot of the yard. The left one got the biggest haircut. Here's a picture of it nearly finished.

We also trimmed the front yard trees, but I forgot to get pictures of that.

And below is a picture of the aftermath. The branches were dragged over to the side of the house awaiting further cutting down to more manageable sizes. Sad to say these limbs are still waiting for that stage on the side of the house.... Don't judge. We were tired. :P

However, Paul did get started on a few of them with our new handy dandy electric chainsaw. He calls it the Almost Manly Chainsaw. It's a chainsaw but it's electric. The chainsaw makes it manly, but the electric makes it almost so. Almost Manly. But hey! It works great and is ecological! It's all in an effort to help save all of the moose in the world. Seriously. The moose have thanked us. Honest! Fine, don't believe me. :P

We also chopped down an ugly bush that was on the right side of our yard but I forgot to get pictures of that, too. I apparently was a bad journalistic blogger/photographer that day. Anyway that bush was like half a bush because it was planted right next to the neighbor's fence and could only grow out against the fence. And it was all by itself. It just looked out of place and... well.... kind of stupid. We never liked it. So out it went. We still have the stump to try and take out. Anyone want to volunteer for that job?? Don't stumble over yourselves getting over here. I know everyone is just dying to take that on, aren't you?

All of the above was done one day about a week and a half ago. Yesterday we tackled the conifer growing along the front side of our garage.

This conifer was getting tall and out of place. It made the yard look unbalanced and it was growing at an odd angle, leaning a bit to the left and forward toward the road a bit. The unbalanced look of it drove Paul crazy. (Not a far trip.... Don't tell him I said that! LOL!) I looked into how to trim conifers but apparently they only grow up so if you cut it down it just ceases to grow. So we decided to take it out.

Now I'm going to be real and honest here. Cutting this conifer was hard because this tree was most likely planted when the house was built, making it 14 years old. It just felt wrong cutting down a tree that started life with the house. We love nature and it went against our core, but we also knew that the conifer wasn't working next to the house. We also calmed ourselves with the fact that we were going to plant a new shrub in it's place. :)

The garbage we found hiding under this conifer! Toys and drink pouches obviously from neighbor kids.

However, even though it was hard to do, we have planted a new shrub in it's place - one that will actually fit the space and will balance out the landscaping around the house. We put in a baby Burning Bush, which will match the Burning Bush on the right hand corner of the house. We absolutely love that bush! It is beautiful green in the summer that turns flaming red in the fall. Hence it's name. Here's a picture. Aren't they gorgeous?

Check out this previous post to see the Burning Bush on the right side of the house 5 years ago. It was quite a lot smaller then. Now it is as big as the bush pictured above, so they grow quickly. In fact, that bush is growing so well that it has sent out 2 new bushes next to it that I discovered yesterday. Little baby Burning Bushes! I was thrilled to find them and plan on transplanting them to the backyard so we can enjoy their color back there too.

Next post I'll get everyone caught up on the hallway flooring project. I know, I know... I promised it for this post but I thought the yard work progress would be a better post this time around. Don't hate me. It's coming and the outcome of it is awesome! :D

Repurposing a Dining Room Chandelier - Colonial Style!

I know that I've not been posting much on this blog, but we've been taking things a little bit slower since the repainting of the kitchen/dining room walls. Apparently I'm a "gosh darn rabbit" running all over the place and it was driving my poor husband crazy. He says: "Can't I just get used to being a homeowner before I dive into a bottomless pit of home improvement???"

Me: "But I've been waiting 19 years to do this stuff! NINETEEN YEARS!"

Paul: "You're driving me insane."

Humph! Under my breath, "Turtle."

So I agreed to try to slow down a bit.

From what I understand, one thing that seems to accompany home improvement is stress for the non artsy types. I can see the finished product in my mind and I can deal with the unfinished parts because I can already see it finished in my mind's eye. This is not so with the non artsy people. All they see is a mess. So since I value my marriage and I value my husband's sanity, I took a step back.

But I'm still an artist. And a Running Rabbit Artist at that. I'm the type that can go go go go and have a bunch of projects going on at the same time. Which means the kitchen is not finished. At all. In fact, I've not continued work on it. I jumped headlong into another project, and then another, and yet another!

And that's when my husband had his moment of frustration with me and we had the above conversation.

So, I now have a bunch of unfinished projects but the good news is that we talked it out and came to an understanding and agreement. No more new projects started until we finish the ones we started. (Read: I started...)

One of those finished projects is the dining room chandelier. And my husband is right - it's good to finish something before jumping into the next project.

Here's a picture of the dining room chandelier that was here. Paul hated it with a passion. He was always hitting his head on the sharp point on the bottom. I was indifferent to it, being "fun-sized" as my darling daughter likes to say (read short), but I knew it wasn't in line with the style I was going for so it was easy to take that thing down.

We looked around at new chandeliers at home improvement stores.

Holy Mackerel! Those things are expensive! Not going to happen, even if we had the money. No way was I parting with that much cash for a stinking light fixture.

Luckily for me, my husband is great at finding good deals from online auctions and yard sales.

Luckily for him, I'm great at changing those good deals to make them look amazing.

We're a good team. :)

Paul found this ugly chandelier on an online auction. The gold was so 1980's and 90's. It was hideous. Plus it had this ugly bulbous round ball hanging on the bottom.

But the shape and overall style was perfect! He showed it to me and asked me what I thought and I could see this ugly duckling as the swan it truly was. I said "Yes! Buy it!"

We got it for $8.00 Score!! And then we bought a can of black satin finish spray paint for $3.00.

Total for this project $11! Can't beat that!

The first step was to sand the chandelier down so the spray paint would adhere to it.

Then I spray painted the whole thing except for the "candle sticks." I had to let it sit and dry for a couple hours and then I put a second coat of paint on it.

It's finally taking shape and my husband could see what was in my mind's eye with this one!

Sorry about the cluttered garage, but we had it hanging in there for me to paint it. See the ugly ball on the table? I started to paint it without thinking. Oops! I never intended to use it.

And here's the finished chandelier in the dining room! Doesn't it look beautiful? Now that it is black and doesn't have that ugly ball hanging from the bottom it is perfect for the Colonial look I was going for!

The next step with the dining room is ripping out that carpet and laying down new flooring. I'll actually be doing that this coming week. We want to power through the dining and living room floor to get it done so my husband can relax a bit without a bunch of unfinished areas in the house. After the floor I'll focus on the kitchen and actually finish that. Yes, I will. This time I promise because otherwise my husband will ring my neck. Lovingly, of course. :D

Tomorrow I hope to blog about the hallway carpet I ripped out. Yeah, that was another project.... Hee hee!
It's no wonder my husband was about to lose his sanity with me! LOL!