Well here we are with week 2 of the One Room Challenge hosted by Linda at Calling it Home. We got a TON done this past week! It all started with ripping up our old carpet. Here is a picture of how it looked when we moved in….yes it looked nice but just over the past few years and kids it has not worn well. It had a bunch of dark areas and we couldn’t get it up with cleaner or rug cleaning. It also smelled like stinky dogs on a rainy day. (The previous owners had a couple dogs.)
It was a no brainer that this needed to come up! You couldn’t lay on the floor without smelling the stink. New floor it is! We ended up going with this amazing vinyl flooring by Allure Flooring. You can purchase it at Home Depot. This specific line is their grip strip line. It is sooooo easy to install! I kid you not we installed the living room and hallway in one evening! We started at around 8pm after our girls went to bed and finished around 1am. All we had left to do was one strip down the hallway and a couple rows in the living room. That did take us a couple hours but the only reason it did was because we had some crazy angles. BUT we never had to step outside to cut the pieces. All you do is score it with a box cutter and break it in half! I’ll get into more detail soon as I’m going to do a Facebook live while I install it in my kitchen!
So back to prepping the floor for installation. My husband started by ripping up the carpet. He cut it down into a few strips so that when carrying it out to his truck it wouldn’t be too heavy. Look at him work! 🙂
The next step was to rip up the carpet padding. This was the most tedious part of the demo. It was very soft and easy to rip out but it was stapled to the ground with hundreds of staples. We set up the pack and play and filled it with toys so the girls could play while I sat down and started removing the staples.
After all the padding was removed it was time to clean up. We removed all the excess material and swept and vacuumed and swept and vacuumed again until it was nice and clean. 🙂 The subfloor was in pretty good condition but unfortunately we still needed to install some luan because the floor from the kitchen and dining room were higher than the living room.
Since I didn’t have to worry about getting paint on the floor I got to work on painting all the trim and woodwork. I started with the windows. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to look at our newly painted trim! It really brightens up the room!
I waited to paint the baseboards as I knew they could get scratched up while the luan was being installed. We had never installed luan before and weren’t sure we had all the proper tools so we enlisted in our friend/contractor for some help. He installed it while I was out of town with the girls so I came home to a smoother and more level floor!
After that was installed I got to work on the baseboards. We decided to leave the baseboards in and then install quarter round. We weren’t sure our baseboards would hold up if we ripped them off the wall so we kept them there. I’ll have a tutorial on how to install quarter round in the next couple weeks!
Before we installed the new floor though we decided to leave our mark on the luan. Maybe some day if we move and someone decides to change the floor they’ll see our cute little drawing.
Stay tuned for the reveal on the flooring! It’s absolutely stunning and I can’t wait to share it with you!
Happy Wednesday everyone!
Angela @ Simply Beautiful By Angela says
I can’t wait to see how it turned out! We just ripped up our carpet for the ORC and laid laminate and I’m soooo happy to not have gross carpet anymore haha 🙂
Ruthie says
Isn’t it so nice to get rid of that carpet!!?
mary says
Isn’t it satisfying to pull up the nasty carpet!? The trim looks so much better painted white…I can’t wait to see how the rest of the space turns out.
Ruthie says
It is gratifying taking out that old carpet. The room feels so much cleaner and nice now! I’m obsessed with the trim!
Libbie says
Excited to see it!!!
Ruthie says
Thanks I absolutely love the floor! It looks so much better than the old carpet!