This past Friday, Megan and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary. According to Megan (and confirmed by Google), the traditional gift for surviving five years is wood. On a related note, we have two children who thought that our off-white carpet looked better with a rainbow of food and drink stains. With these two factors in hand, Megan and I decided it was time to replace the carpet and install new laminate wood floors.
About a two weeks ago, when the project had been officially sanctioned, we decided to give the hearth room and kitchen a fresh coat of paint.
I removed the baseboards (only broke one out of about 25. Not too shabby)
And Megan and Hazel worked on painting the walls.
We then went to Lowes and picked up a box or 67 of flooring.
The before picture (well, after painting but still with carpet)
No more carpet, and the carpet pad on its way out.
The girls testing out the interim concrete floors.
We had noticed that there was a fair amount of paint on the concrete when we pulled up the carpet. Hazel and Elise decided to add a little bit more.
And Megan thought it looked like too much fun to pass up.
Of course, my painting was with concrete to patch the cracks in the floor.
The hearth room with all of the underlayment down.
And so it begins...
We ran into the hardest part of the job pretty early on when trying to get the floor from either side of the half wall to match up.
The mad cutter at work with one of his many saws (I think I used no fewer than 4 different saws on this project).
Megan finishing up the closet.
Ok, if you have seen one picture of us putting down floors, you've seen them all. So, without further ado, some shots of the final product.
The closet.
The front room.
Part of the kitchen. We even put down new floors under the fridge and oven.
And the hearth room. Quite a change from the "before" picture above!
It was a long, hard weekend, but I can't think of anyone I would have rather spent it with. Happy Anniversary Megan!
