Renovations

So we did it.  We ripped up the carpet in the living room and the hallway and put down a floating hardwood floor.  It is not quite perfect--I discovered a scratch and also a place where the pattern of the board we put down got too matchy from row to row and it annoys me.  But it is still really quite nice.  We are very pleased with the floor and with ourselves, naturally.  Of course, we could never have finished it all in a day and a half if it weren't for help from friends and David's dad and his wife.  If I were to type out the story of the entire process--the in-laws, the thunderstorm warning and tornado watch, the lights flickering, the pounding rain, the blood spurting from David's finger, the whining dogs--it would take far too long.  Also, it's not really that exciting, except maybe for the part where I dropped the F-bomb while describing how pissed I would be if a tornado ripped off my roof and ruined my new floors.

So instead of a narrative, I offer you our floor make-over in pictures:

The Before Pictures.  

Carpet is dingy and gross.  Home to pet hair and dander.  Stained by wine, pizza sauce, nail polish, dog barf, puppy pee, and probably some other spills of varying levels of grossness.  Happily, Buffy is on TV.

 Cleared out the furniture and stacked it in the back room.  David and I managed to do this all by ourselves on Friday night.  Do we know how to have a good time on a weekend or what?

Pulling up the carpet.  Not pictured:  Me, pulling out HUNDREDS of tiny staples.

Hardwood floors revealed!  Perhaps we can just refinish this cute parquet flooring and not have to do this project at all...

Hardwood floors revealed to be seriously damaged and filled in in two different places by large plywood boards (Little Mac reclines on a pillow near one such board).  Guess we'll be putting down new floors after all...

Or maybe new red carpet!  Just kidding.  This is the underlayment.  It is essentially tiny styrofoam beads taped to red plastic.  Nice and cushy.

Our friend, Max poses with David.  We love to take advantage of our friends.  We paid Max for his hard work with Lee's Fried Chicken and some steaks.  We definitely got the better end of the deal, but don't tell Max.

David's dad Joe gets things started.  As he would say, "Now we're cookin' with grease!"

The corners get tricky.  Three heads are better than one.  Or four, as I was always happy to offer my opinion.  Or call my dad.

About halfway done.  

David moves stuff around.

Cooper supervises.

Finished floor!  Waiting on baseboards.  And would you believe that we didn't have to cut any of the boards to make skinnier pieces at the sides?  We had a perfect fit of five-inch boards across the room.  It was a miracle.

F

Fin.  

Cards game on TV.  Life as usual commences.

So, there she is.  Put back together.  Looks just the same, right?  Only without the carpet.  Now we just have two more rooms to tackle...  The hardest part was the prep work--putting the boards down was easy and actually kind of fun.  Like a puzzle where you can create your own pattern.  I did my fair share of the manual labor, we just don't have photographic evidence of it (will remedy when we move on to the other two rooms).