New Floors!

Since the carpet was here for who knows how long (we think at least 2 years) before we moved in, and we've been here for almost 8 years, it was showing some wear and needed to be replaced. So we've replaced the flooring in the Living Room, Kitchen, Eating area, Family Room and up the stairs into the hallway. It was a big job and of course took longer than expected, but it's done! Finally

Thursday Josh and his Dad put in almost 12 hours ripping up the old stuff starting at 4pm. Josh's Mom put in a good 10 hours herself. What awesome parents! I didn't come in until the last 5 hours, but I think I was helpful.

As with any project, you always run into problems. So, Problem #1: after ripping the tile up in the kitchen, that floor was uneven with the Living Room and I wanted a smooth transition. The Solution: put a whole new plywood floor on top of the subfloor. That was what we did from about 1am to 3:30am. Since we don't own a saber saw, Josh's Dad was nice enough to come back the next morning and cut holes for the heating vents, and he began work on problem #2 which was....... Problem #2: The Family Room has a cement subfloor and it is not level everywhere that we wanted the wood to go so we had to level it using a cement patch mix.

The kids all were really good while the floors were ripped up. We had breakfast in a different room each day for 3 days. What's better than breakfast on a blanket? They had to wear shoes everywhere since it is nearly impossible to find every single staple where the carpet had been, and it was just so dusty.

Here are some before and after pictures.
I tried to take them from the same spots.

The stairs don't look much different in this picture, but the top of each stair was black and they were showing the most wear.

Before Living Room:

After:


Kitchen Before:

After:



Family Room Before:


After: