Finally New Carpet Upstairs

So I have been on this baby kick for quite awhile, and it's not because I'm baby obsessed. It's mainly because I've been an overall slacker and then I find myself behind on my baby post so then that is all I post! I should be posting once a week on baby but clearly I'm barely posting anything at all.

Time to change it up a bit. We were long overdue for carpet upstairs in our home. The rooms had different shades of carpet and we had no earthly idea why. What's more is that when the first homeowners lived here, we figure they must have selected the hodge podge carpet on purpose. Now you remember how the downstairs carpet looked right? If not you can refresh your memory here in the carpets, carpets, carpets post.  Well the upstairs wasn't as bad but it was not good at all. Take a look at these closeup images of the stairs. The spots are a bit exaggerated because there is stain removal spray on them but seriously you should NEVER have that many stains in 4 year old carpet!

 

 Here is a view of the upstairs carpet with stain remover spray on it.

To give you a bit more detail on the carpet upstairs, the stairs and hallway were gray, the master had brown carpet and the other 3 bedrooms had a blueish shade happening. MADE NO SENSE! No matter how much we tried we could not make this carpet look good. We literally have had to replace the floors in the entire house and of course the downstairs took precedence. So when we were finally able to get to the upstairs it was a long time coming. Take a look at the before staircase:

And here is the staircase sans carpet:

And here is the final product! It's a low pile berber known as Spanish Bay. We still have some painting to do as you can tell based on the brown wood on the let and right.

And here is a photo of the new carpet upstairs, stain free!

It's wonderful!!! And it has that new carpet smell! I can finally walk around without my slippers on. Oh happy day.

Tatum

We Have Carpet!!

I know to some, the idea of carpet yields icky thoughts of other peoples sweaty toes squishing around and making the carpet gross. To others carpets yield thoughts of warm and comfort and a better image of cute baby toes squishing around. To me, I don't care what your thoughts are because at least in our family room our carpet no longer looks like what the prior owners left us throughout the house:

What can only be described as a murder scene

I mean seriously! In four years of this house existing the prior owners managed to do this type of damage. This carpet was one of the main reasons why I was not a fan of the family room. There was no way I was going to nestle my delicate toes in this. To me it didn't matter how many times we shampooed the carpet, the fact that it still looked this way was enough to keep me away.

I was fortunate enough to meet a person at my orthodontists office whose husband just so happened to lay carpet. We were lucky that he was willing to give us a HUGE deal (I mean the type of deal that we were able to get carpet and still plan our wedding) because without it, we would have had to live with this unsightly carpet for a little longer.

 

We immediately moved everything out of the family room and piled it all into the kitchen. I have never watched carpet be installed before. It was quite entertaining and Tom (the installer) was quick with it too!

 

It was crazy watching all of the staples pop right out of the floor!! Chris and I could have really used one of those tools when we removed the carpet in the living room to install the hardwoods a couple years prior:

Yep, that was arduous work right there!!

Man, just flashing back to that makes me glad that I endured the pain of four months of braces on steroids. From this point forward I will not remove carpet again unless I have the snazzy tool thing that Tom had.

and the long knee jamming contraption thing was something out of a movie! I personally would have thought it would hurt to jam my knee against the thingy, but not to super Tom! The carpet just folded right into the edge of the wall. That along with the tack strippy things and the carpet was officially a permanent part of the family room!

Isn't it just wonderful!! Tom told us that it's best to not walk on carpet with your bare feet because the oils in your feet is what causes the carpet to get that smashed nasty carpet look. He said that you should only wear socks. Of course we nodded like two people that would heed his advice, but as soon as they left we proceeded to do the happy dance:

...barefoot lol.

Tatum

Unglued!

Hey there peeps! So as you know we have started so many projects that are still not finished. Why you might ask...because we have a lot of house and a little money of course! It's simple science...or math... or whatever, those weren't my strongest subjects clearly; but I digress. Let me show you yet another incomplete project:

This is our kitchen floor as it was when we moved in. Mind you the house was only 4 years old. Here is another view:

Isn't it beautiful? I mean in all of its ugly gray vinyly glory. Don't you think the giant animal (or crazy human toenail) scratches give it character? OK, seriously I'm kidding. However, this is yet another of the many projects that the lovely prior owners left us. Gotta love those folks, it's like they just knew that we were made of money. I really think they said why don't we ruin ALL of the floors in the house so that new owners can get a fresh start. We have in fact gotten a fresh start but it moves at a slower pace of course. Eventually we began to gradually purchase these:

Tile! Why tile? Because after my oh so sweet better half labored at laying the hardwood floors, I think he was rather spent. I, being decor impatient decided to go ahead and "see" how they would look by laying them all over the ugly floor!

I think they look great!! They'll look even better once they're attached. Even though we have so many incomplete projects, it makes maneuvering throughout the house so much more bearable because each room is a bit closer to DONE. That makes me happy!

Tatum

Lets Speed This Up

Because honestly, how many days can you talk about installing hardwoods?

There goes that shirtless handyman again :-)

And......Done!

Well almost done. There are several random things that we still have to do, like put in the baseboards, sand and paint the dining room walls and get rid of that hideous wall paper trim:

But for the most part, the floors are finished:

Whew!! That was a lot of work. But well worth it, we love our new floors!!

Tatum

Tool Time!

When we finally got around to laying the floors, the first thing that we did was lay them down to see what they would look like.

We were also not sure if we wanted to leave a section hardwood free for the non-existent foyer:

Not having a real foyer, we considered laying tile in the area but later thought that it would look a bit weird so we decided to take the floors all the way across.

Chris was entirely psyched to jump right in using his new snazzy power tools like this miter saw:

And this wonderful table saw that I got him for his birthday:

Actually I don't really know how wonderful it is. But I do know that he was so excited to open the big box. He had no clue what it was.

So needless to say, when the floors came in, it was time to cut...saw...whatever. No preparations needed...literally:

Yep, I know. Obviously I was nowhere to be found because this would not have been acceptable. Take a closer look...at the sawdust FLYING TOWARD HIS EYES!!

No, shoes, no mask, no protective goggles and from the looks of it almost no fingers! Gotta love this man, Mr. Invincible. I do understand his enthusiasm and as previously mentioned, we're good at showing you what not to do when you're DIY-ing.

However, this is unacceptable! We may not know all the rules but we know to use protection!! Most of us learned that in high school...he he he...(my apologies, sometimes I think I'm a comedian) Not funny huh? Ooookay, moving on!

When I got home I took care of things:

And trust me, he's wearing shoes this time. I know he isn't wearing a shirt but when you think about it, just how much protection would a bit of cotton provide him anyway? I was perfectly fine with him being shirtless with a power saw lol!

Tatum

Give Me Wood!!!

Hardwood that is! Finally after winter wore off we went to a very reasonable Lumber Liquidators and purchased our floors! Brazilian Cherry hardwood floors to be exact. There were about 20 boxes total, we were so excited about them. Not to mention we purchased 500 sq. ft of floors for $1800. WHAT A DEAL!! Today those floors would cost you about $4347.

Did I mention that we did the labor ourselves? Well, I laid a couple but Chris did the majority of the work. That's right, DIY at it's finest and another $2000 in our pockets cha-ching!

We had to do a few things to prepare for this task like buy one of these thing-a-ma-jiggers:

Otherwise known as an air compressor. One of these alien shaped gadgets:

Better known as a floor nailer. Lastly we needed a mallet! Now I recognized this immediately:

Our very next move was to open all of the boxes to see how the woods matched:

Wow, now that's a lot of wood.  Did I mention that we've never done this before....EVER?

Tatum

I'm linking to The Thrifty Home. Check her out!

Speed It Up

For those of you who read my maybe baby post...sorry for the anxiety, anticipation or whatever it was that I might have caused you. Didn't mean to make you think that I was with child, in the family way, going to be a mummy etc. I just wanted to capture the moment....so moving on...

So really, how long can you talk about ripping up carpets right? So lets finish this up. Once the dining room was finished we began to pull up the carpet in the living room:

 And just like that we were done!

So now that the living room floors are all sub-floor, we were pretty much confined to the family room which was kind of a hodge podge of everything unfinished. Stay tuned to see how Christmas prep was a bit rough.

Tatum

Rip It A Little Bit More, Then Shovel!

Apparently while ripping up the dining room carpet I got a bit distracted:

You see the polish remover? Clearly I must have had to remove chipped polish, Lord forbid I remove carpet with chipped polish! Seriously though, I have absolutely no clue why that is even there, but I do know why the paint fan is there. I flip through the paint fan like I flip through a book, OFTEN.

Finally after pulling up about a thousand staples out of the dining room floor, we were finished! Check out this beautiful STAINED sub-floor!

If you remember, we closed on our house on October 30th, which meant winter was upon us. So we decided that we better leave the living room carpet in tact a little while longer while we tackle this:

Working outside was a welcomed break from the inside, but we enjoy it!

Tatum