I'm Walking On Sunshine!

When I last left you, the walls were up and we had already started painting.

When they were working on the walls we decided to start laying our floor.

We had previously decided to do a bamboo flooring that would coordinate with our upstairs hardwood floors. Originally we were going to leave the family room carpet and just put wood flooring at the bottom of the stairs and into the new piano room. When we found some flooring that we liked, we just decided to do it all. Go for the gold...right?! Truthfully, what was the breaking point was we found some flooring at Lumber Liquidators and it was being done away with. The chance of never being able to find the wood, if we changed our mind, was what did it.
We moved all of the furniture and toys and crap to one side of the room and started taking up the carpet and baseboards.

Underneath our carpet was...Surprise...peel and stick tile.

I probably shouldn't have been shocked, but I was, a little. On top of the peel and stick tile they had put some sort of glue to hold the carpet pad down. Only problem was, I couldn't clean the glue off, I tried, and the glue was still sticky. Tacky sticky. It was pretty gross. Instead of taking up the tile, which would have taken a good long while, we decided to lay the wood over the top of the tile.

We ordered some underlayment for the floor when we ordered the wood. It is supposed to help with sound and water.

We used some spacers and started laying the floor.

It wasn't necessarily quick work, but it wasn't horrible either. When Blake and I were working together we were definitely faster then me doing it on my own.

We worked in sections pulling up the carpet, pad, tack strips, and baseboards so that we wouldn't have too much tile exposed since it was sticky

and we were still having to "live" in the area.

Cutting around all the little nooks and crannies was the most time consuming.

When half of the room was done we moved the furniture over and started working on the other half of the room.

The wood extends all the way into the new piano room.

By the end, we just wanted it to be done so we worked really hard one weekend to finish it.

With the wood floors in and the walls painted it finally looked like a room.

By removing the carpet in the family room, it occurred to Blake and I that we no longer had any carpet in our house.

Eventually, we plan on carpeting the two back rooms but for now we are quite happy to have the nasty carpet out of the house.

It is amazing the difference it has made!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

And just to really rock your world...

Really Before:

and After:

Really Before:

and After:

Walls Have Never Been More Welcomed

Well friends....

We are going with: slow and steady wins the race.

We didn't have any time constraints with this project so we have just been working on it when we can. The kids went back to school, and it seems there is always a lot of preparation with that.

But...we have rooms. Two real rooms!

Here is where we left off...

It was hard, as they were putting up the drywall, to not stand there and oogle.

First off, people that do drywall for a living are FAST.

Second, a small man (just a little bit bigger then me) was lifting 12' drywall above his head, by himself, and hanging it on the ceiling.

It was pretty cool to watch.

After a day the rooms were almost completely hung.

For anyone that is wondering, the green board is for moisture. We put it on the outside wall, and any that was left over got dispersed around the rooms.

That night I just sat in our super messy family room and admired drywall.

As odd as that sounds I was thrilled. Drywall makes it feel like the rooms are actually going to be completed at some point.

The next time that they came they worked on the seams. Mudding and taping.

On the forth day was the sanding.

Sanding....=dust. EVERYWHERE.

The amount of dust is amazing. It is all over our house, even though we put up a plastic sheet to kind of contain it.

You would think that the completion of the drywall would mean that we were half way there. Nope.

But it felt better.
Like we were really accomplishing something.

Somehow, I convinced Blake to paint he ceiling. I am still not quite sure how I swung that. If you look at his face...you will see painting is not his jam.

We applied one coat of primer on all of the new sheetrock, two coats of paint on the ceiling and two coats of paint on each wall.

Doing panoramic pictures are a little funny, but it seems to be the only way to get an idea of this space. I would like to point out, that Blake is neither that large, nor does he have what appears to be elephantiasis in his leg.

Once the primer was up and the ceiling painted I moved onto the walls. We decided to use the same blue green color that is in our family room on the piano room too. That way it kind of gives the appearance that they are the same room.

The toy room has also been getting a snazzy paint job.

I decided a while ago to do an Alice in Wonderland themed room. Not literally, but loosely based. If you want the honest truth...any reason to have giant mushrooms on the wall is a good reason.

I picked out the color for the stripes on the wall, bought the paint and then got to work.

Then it sat. Half painted. For days.

I just didn't love it.

It was OK.

So I tried a light blue.

Still not digging it.

So I switched and went for a darker teal color....

That is what it needed.

I still have a lot of painting to do, but don't you worry your pretty little head, I will keep you updated.

Plus...the new bamboo floors went it. 

Squeal!

All the Boring Stuff Before the Good Stuff

When we last left all all the walls were torn out.

When all of that was done, Blake started rebuilding the new wall.

At that moment I realized that I would not make a very good engineer, or builder for that matter. Blake was meticulous about measuring 19 gazillion times and making sure it was level just as many times. If it was me, I would have looked at it..."Yep. Looks about right" and called it good.

It is moments like that that I simultaneously realize, that is why Blake and I are a good team, and why we could never be on the amazing race together.

After the wall was put up and level, we moved on to the open door way.

It stated out looking like this:

We wanted the new door to be more of an opening at the bottom of the stairs to give it better flow, so we got to cutting.

Surprisingly, deciding where to open the wall to, was a lengthy conversation. In the end we decided to open it all the way to the bottom of the stairs. So, just a little bit bigger then this picture.

We also decided, long ago, that we would keep the secret passage way for the kids.

So, in order to make it a little bit nicer looking, Blake framed out the small doorway to the passageway.

This is where a lot of things, that have taken a lot of time, happened.

None of these pictures are all that interesting, unless you are planning on doing the same to your house. However, all of these things took Blake (working on them at nights) a couple days.

First up? HVAC.

On an exciting scale, this would rate very close to snooze-fest.

Blake cut into our HVAC duct. We had bought the corner ducts from Home Depot, and some flexible duct work.

He put the corner duct in then attached the flexible duct.

He secured it to the ceiling using the worlds largest zip ties.

Feeling the air flow through the ducts was very gratifying.

Next on the list was electrical. I would like to say that we did this...but we didn't. We hired a professional to do the job. Our wires were such a cluster-fest that it made more sense to have a professional look at it. Thankfully he was our friend, so it wasn't too costly.

Next, we had someone come and fix our main water shut off valve and the water spigot to the outside.

After all of that was done, Blake started on the insulation. When we picked up the insulation from the store Gavin asked why it smelled like cotton candy. We assured him, that it was all in his head.

Not only did it Not smell like cotton candy, it made Blake itch like it was nobodies business.

After all of that, we mostly feel a sense of accomplishment, and it isn't even done yet.

We decided a couple of weeks ago to also leave the drywall to a professional. We are nothing if not realists. We realize that our walls and ceilings have no texture and this is two big rooms. Our skills just don't compare to people that do it day in and day out.

They started doing the sheetrock today.

We are hoping that they will be done by the end of the week so that we can get to the good stuff.

We are putting in bamboo floors downstairs, that will match our upstairs wood floors.

I even did a preliminary lay out to see what they would look like.

Soon, very soon, it will be good bye carpet and hello wood. I also am a little giddy to have my house back to normal, or at least...new normal.