The REALLY big thing we took on in February was redoing the flooring on our ENTIRE first floor. Brian made sure to take some good before pictures before we started demo work.
Before we could start on the flooring, there were a few things we needed to take out (besides the flooring, of course.) Number one was our front entryway closet. It was severely underutilized., and we thought we could make the whole entry more inviting by getting rid of it. We nervously cut holes inside the closet to make sure there weren't major things in the wall that would complicate things. We figured it would be pretty straight forward since our neighbors had a similar floor plan and didn't have an entryway closet. Unfortunately, we were mostly right. We found this big drain pipe inside the closet wall.
We got some bids from plumbers and consulted a handyman friend, and decided it was still doable and so we moved forward with the closet demo.
The plumber bids were a bit outrageous, so our neighbor/friend/bishopric member/contractor for our deck cover, Bryan, insisted that Brian could handle it on his own, and he came over to help a little bit. Brian and Bryan got that pipe in our wall in no time!
Brian even knew a guy to help us with the drywall patch.
He was short on time, so we ended up hiring the mudding out using Thumbtack.
Meanwhile, we also wanted to remove the arch in our mudroom. As a reminder, this is what it looked like:
This little wall/doorway took a good 8 inches away from our mudroom. In an effort to give us more mudroom storage, we decided to remove it.
For the record, I helped with both demos. I removed the shelving in the closet and the bench and shiplap in the mudroom. I took a good chunk of the drywall in both places as well, though Brian was much faster at it.
Removing this lovely, but impractical doorway/archway, it really opened up the mudroom space.
The drywall guy and mudders patched the drywall here at the same time as the front entryway closet.
Finally, it was time to attack the floors! The laminate came up really easily, and we gave it to Sandy, our housecleaner. We felt good that it would get a second chance, especially because it wasn't old and was in great shape.
There were lots of baseboards to remove, and because of the shortages in building materials, we had to be extra careful in removing them. We enlisted the kids to help.
Rachel got pretty good at removing the nails from the boards.
We gave the carpet away on KSL, which was super handy because we didn't have to pay to throw it in the landfill!
We opted NOT to haul our piano into the garage. That thing is so HEAVY with the extra bellows and things for the player apparatus.
Getting the flooring up led to some interesting discoveries. We already suspected that the original flooring in the house was the linoleum that we have in the master bathroom and kids bathroom upstairs, but at some point, the family room must have had part of its original carpet removed. They added these boards to make the flooring level when they added the tile in the mudroom and the laminate floors.
Because of this, we decided we needed to remove the linoleum as well as the laminate to make the entire first floor level for the new flooring. Kirt came over to help.
It was tough work, but not as bad as we thought it was going to be because we just had to get under the boards that the linoleum was glued to.
(We also opted NOT to take the table into the garage. Or the fridge.)
Once we got the linoleum out, it was time for the family room carpet. We saved this for last so we'd have a comfy place to sit for as long as possible.
As you can probably guess, we ordered in quite a bit during this project.
There were so many nails to remove.
Removing the carpet from the stairs was really tricky. Then tacked that on good! Brian was ready to just have our flooring installers remove it, but I was determined we could get it! I stubbornly and sneakily waited until he headed out for a couple of hours and tackled it myself. He'd been working hard for days and had hit a breaking point. It was a fun surprise when he got home!
The staples were really tricky to get out.
We were also going to have the flooring guys remove the tile. Brian got the toilet and sink out, and then we noticed the linoleum under the tile and thought, "I bet we could get that out without too much effort (we'd watched enough home reno shows to know that removing tile is no joke.)
Brian was able to get under the linoleum boards, lift up, and then the tile just popped right off! We were even able to save most of the big pieces, though what we think we're going to do with them is anyone's guess.
Not pictured is the 3-4 different ways we tried to get staples that were holding the old laminate underlayment down. They were EVERYWHERE where the old laminate was, and after trying pliers and scrapers, Brian finally got fed up and went and bought an angle grinder to grind them out quickly. It still took quite awhile though.
Finally, we were ready for the flooring to be installed.
We totally hired this part out, and as a result, the new luxury vinyl plank went in really quickly.
The first order of business was to get our fridge back in, so Brian reinstalled those baseboards right off the bat. It is not our best patch up work. We may have leaned heavily on the idea that the fridge will always be there.
Baseboard install was a beast. Since the new floors are lower than the previous floors (and since most sections had had the baseboards removed and reinstalled when the laminate was installed), we had to patch lots of gouges that were in the wall from the baseboard. We applied and sanded the filler to smooth the wall again. So, add the patching stuff, sand, paint, attach baseboards, fill those holes, caulk, and paint. It took forever, especially because we were already tired of this project. It was totally worth it though! I have hated the carpet cutout walkway in our living room since we first saw the house, and I knew it would only be a matter of time until it looked like this.
There is always so much sweeping and mopping needed to clean up the floors after instal. Thankfully, I had good help.
Whenever we were feeling weary of all the baseboard work, we remembered that we were really sick of having our main level of living as a construction zone.
Not long after install, we found a crack/ protrusion in our flooring. Thankfully, they came back and took care of it right away.
We learned another funny thing about our dog throughout this project: she's a glove kleptomaniac. If Brian left his gloves where she could get them, she'd take one when we weren't looking and go hide it somewhere. We still don't know why, but Brian only figured it out when checking our kitchen camera to see if he could figure out why one of his gloves disappeared.
Catching Gracie's theft on camera was almost comical enough to erase Brian's frustration in spending the time hunting his missing glove. It led us to finding the missing glove in Rachel's room
and another time in ours.
Does she even look ashamed? I leave it to you, dear reader, to be the jury on that.
We taught Michael how to caulk.
And thank goodness! He was a big help!
Not pictured: Brian reinstalling the toilet--twice (because he missed a vital step the first time.)
Getting our mudroom bathroom back was one of my favorite things. Having four toilets in the house has really spoiled me. Every time I had to go up or downstairs to use the bathroom, I would initially be irritated and then remind myself that I grew up with only one bathroom in the entire house and shared it with seven other people. And when I felt compelled to complain about all the work, I reminded myself that we are incredibly blessed to have this house, the ability to turn it into what we wanted, and that this whole project was 100% optional. That mostly helped. And we reminded ourselves of how much money we saved by installing the baseboards ourselves.
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