Flooring!

The most satisfying feeling of the month has been to rip up the brown 80's carpet out of our bedrooms.

Yes, I did it myself.  Yes, it's a dirty dirty job.  And YES! it's so good to get it out of there!  

It's only been about a year and a half since we've lived here, on that nasty carpet, but who was counting?  

I was so eager to lay new floors, that I did all the prep work so Dean (and his brother, who came up one weekend to help) could get right to work in the evenings and on the weekends.  Prep meaning emptying the bedrooms, ripping up the old carpet and foam underlayment, and scraping the old glue off the floor (I left the tack strips to my strapping hubby. Those suckers were stuck nice and good in to the concrete). 

The kids even got in on the glue scraping action.

Child Labor!? What child labor laws?

My hubby may or may not have called me a slave driver several times throughout the whole process.
  

But for the record, I wasn't snapping pictures the whole time.  I oiled and waxed the baseboards, laid some laminate, and even learned to use the miter saw [Insert skinny jean and boot clad fist pump and bicep flex here]!  

My hubby (did I mention that he's handy as well as handsome?) showed me the ropes, or rather the blades, of cutting with the miter saw. For a part of the day he would tell me the measurement for the next piece of flooring, which end needed to be cut, and I would put on my sexy safety goggles and fire up the big, bad, saw. I should have had him snap a picture (Can you tell I'm a bit proud of myself?). 

In all seriousness though, I have to say that I enjoyed stepping into my hubby's turf for this project.  We had fun working together, and it was very satisfying to participate in every aspect of the project.  If you've never really worked side by side with your partner before, put it on your bucket list. Seriously! 

Working on the master bedroom.  Don't mind the curtain floods. Some day I might fix those.

It was a lot of work to live in a remodel job and the house felt upside down the whole time, but we are more than happy with the results.

Can you spot the three major differences between the two photos above?  And no, messy room/clean room does not count as a change!  Think home improvement projects.

Besides the flooring, the boy's room is now sporting a new light fixture and 'cool cucumber' walls (which didn't photograph well).  I think that BEHR misnamed the paint color though; every time I spend time in that room, I feel like eating a bowl of pistachio pudding.

And every time I walk into one of the bedrooms now (barefoot is the best) I marvel at the new, clean, and lighter look.  Yes, it was definitely worth the work.