Flooring Adventures

Yes, we’re remodeling once again! It seems like we can’t go more than six months without either needing to repair or replace something in our house. So far to date we’ve replaced the roof, all appliances, the driveway, the plumbing, remodeled two bathrooms, three bedrooms, and the kitchen.

Whew! That sounds like a huge amount of changes, but keep in mind we’ve lived in this house for eight years, so most of those projects have been quite spaced out. This time around, we’re finally tackling the biggest, smelliest, ugliest eye sore in the house: the carpet.

Please accept this home decorating tip – NEVER install red carpets in your house! This wall to wall carpet stretches through all the bedrooms, hall, dining, and living room and it shows every spec of dirt, every crumb of dropped food.

Unfortunately it was already very worn out when we bought this house more than 8 years ago, which big wrinkles down the middle that were deep enough to trip you. It’s obvious this carpet has to go, but because it covers such a huge space it’s been very hard to plan a time to rip it all out.

Simply put – I hate disrupting my life and routine for renovation work. Josh hates it twice as much as I do, so we can both get pretty grumpy when the house gets chaotic and crowded with tools, wood, dust, and all the other side effects of a big project.

So we’re trying to keep the project small and contained – rip the carpet, clean up the floors, and lay laminate wood flooring on top. We’re also keeping it small by only tackling the dining, hall, and living room. I might never get around to ripping the red carpet from the bedrooms and that’s just fine.

We’ve already had a few surprises with this project. We began ripping in the dining room, only to find that room was once sealed off with a wall and door that must have been removed by the previous owners.

As we ripped into the hall we were in for another surprise. Underneath all the carpet was the most filthy, ugly linoleum floor. I’d previously encountered this floor in the bathroom. Little did I know – it stretches through the ENTIRE house!

The linoleum is in bad shape and was too thick to lay the floor over so yesterday we took the time to rip it out of the hallway. Did I find gorgeous hardwood floors underneath??? No! Paper, glue, and plywood. My house has yet to ever surprise me with anything beautiful or amazing.

In fact, the more we rip, the more we find evidence of what was original to the house, and it’s scary bad. The original carpet in the dining room was avocado green shag which probably complemented this orange linoleum quite nicely. Was everyone living in the 1970’s blind?! Lol!

It might sound mean, but the more I learn about my house from doing these remodels, the more I realize that it was seriously butt ugly when it was built. Ugh!

Okay, enough ranting. I’d better get downstairs and quilt before we start again this morning. At least today we’ll see real progress as the floors begin to go down. Yay!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah