A Giant House Project

Back in the cold bleakness of January, Nate and I were trying to decide what to do about our carpet. We have always seriously disliked it. It's seafoam green, and therefore it clashes with all our other decor, and manages to show every drop of anything that ever happens to land on it. Also it matches our kitchen tile, which has white grout that has never been white as long as we've known it. It's just yucky. So we went back and forth about whether to have it professionally cleaned or buy a carpet cleaner and do it ourselves. But we'd for sure have to get the grout cleaned too because it's just so nasty . . . All the conversations led to expensive and/or labor intensive ideas and the real story was that no matter what we decided to do, it would look dirty again within a week. 

So one day we decided that it was time to just price out how much it would cost to have it all replaced. Definitely a pie-in-the sky dream, but heck, it was January and we had nothing going on, so we decided to do some research, "just for fun."

Two months, lots of dollars, many late nights, and sixty billion Lowes trips later, we're getting close to finishing what we decided to do. It's been a huge learning experience and rather stressful, but also pretty empowering. And we are thrilled with the results! Here are a few pictures to illustrate what's been going on at our house.

Well we ripped all the flooring out. And I do mean all of it. On the entire main floor - living room, kitchen, family room, hall, bathroom, study, and laundry room. Also the tile around our fireplace.

We each inhaled roughly 9 pounds of dust during the destruction process.

Nate had to replace a little bit of rotten subfloor.

Our enormous mountain of waterproof laminate flooring, and the man responsible for installing it.

And here are a couple sneak peeks into the reconstruction: 

New tile for the fireplace.

Our lovely flooring - the color is called "cambridge abbey oak."

We built a little console table.

We endured a couple really smelly weeks with all our bathroom drain pipes open. Luckily that's behind us now.

 Now our house is largely liveable. We are mostly to the finish-work portion. We need to paint the laundry room and lay flooring in there, and caulk and lay baseboards and grout the fireplace. Also finish switching out our cabinet knobs, switch the rest of our sockets and light switches to bright white, and do a little touch-up painting. We're pretty thrilled with how it's all coming together, and also that we've gained so many new skills! Nate especially has learned to lay flooring and tile and do some serious plumbing work (which is his least favorite). Final photos to come hopefully soon!