Challenge: New floors! (May 20th-31st, 2012)

The time had come to replace the old, nasty, dirty, cat-urine soaked, stained carpet, so I rolled up my sleeves and went for it!

After ripping up the carpet (a great work-out, by the way), I pulled up the carpet pad, which was disgusting.

The base-boards and the carpet tacking boards were even harder! I was thoroughly amused to see the previous colors the room had been: Before I painted the walls "cream in my coffee," they had been peptobismol pink (as you can barely see on the right side ~1 in over), then "masking tape blue", and then a near seafoam green, and then putty pale.

Did I do this project alone? No! I had a helper!!! She made sure I got the moisture barrier down right.

And then the work of laying boards down began.

One of my friends had clued me in that laminate has patterns, and to identify which boards were which, and then give them names and a number, so as to make a pattern and make sure 2 of the same board was not placed right next to each other. Good advice! Mine ended up being 1. Paisley 2. Heart 3. Angels choir 4. Child drawn dog running 5. Heavens rays 6. Kayak 7. Man jumping for joy.

I figured it would take a day to pull up the carpet, the padding, sand down the floor, and then have the moisture barrier laid. Then another day to put down the boards. HA!!! Try a day for each item! Except that it took 3 days to get the boards down. 2 days to sand the old carpet glue off the concrete. 1 day to pull up the carpet tacking strips.

But slowly and surely things started to come together. Cessa made sure of it.

Eventually I made it to the last row. I had bought a circular saw and a jig-saw. I figured that class in woodshop, along with all the advice from friends who had done their floors would be good enough. Ha! I couldn't figure out how to get the saw onto the circular saw, and that thing was HEAVY!! So it's getting returned. The jig-saw was perfect!

I'm obviously not a carpenter, and apparently my idea of 1/4 inch is a lot bigger than the tape measure, so I ended up with huge gaps! All the guys I talked to said to pull everything up and do it over. All the girls said to just cut little pieces to fit the holes. Girls won that debate!

And, see? You can't hardly tell! It helps that this is in the closet!

A new coat of paint (which I conveniently had in my closet and matched well) went up (before I put in the new flooring), and baseboards were put down.

I swept up the mess, and stood back to admire my handiwork!

Again, I am not a carpenter, and am very prone to getting hurt. I was expecting major injuries involving loss of blood and limbs while doing this project. Nope! A blister on my ring finger from touching the very hot blade of a bent jig-saw blade...

...and one slightly smashed pointer finger from the hammer putting back the baseboards. Not bad!

Then there was the master-bedroom. I needed new carpet too.....BUT....I went ahead and hired someone to put that in for me. They finished in 2 1/2 hours start to finish. I had to smile. So much easier, and it looked great!!! It is so nice to have new flooring in!