Flooring Part 2: Before and After

I didn't get the greatest "before" pictures because it was kind of an afterthought. But hopefully you'll get the idea.

 Before: Linoleum by the front door and carpet in the living room. Our carpet just didn't look great anymore. After 6 years of kids and many spills, dirt, snow, etc. it just wouldn't bounce back.

 After: Love the look of the laminate wood. It actually opens up the space and makes our living room seem much bigger. It's so easy to clean too, just sweep really quickly.

Another shot of the living room. We were lucky and had these rugs from our house in Alabama. They fit the colors of our house very well and worked well with the small space.

Before: The dining room had the same linoleum from the kitchen, front entry, and mudroom. When we built the house, it was an upgrade to have linoleum in the dining room. We knew there was no way we could have carpet where little kids would eat and SPILL so we upgraded to linoleum.

After: The linoleum was a good choice and lived through many spills and messes. But the new floor looks so good!

I didn't get a "before" picture of the kitchen, but you can imagine how much better this looks than before! I love how our cabinets and appliances look against the color of the floor.

Before: The hallway. Not the greatest of shots, but this is the area with the worst wear and stains.

After: No more gross carpet! It looks so great. We still need to get a runner rug because as kids run into the house from the garage, they slip a little.






We are so glad our project is mostly done. We still need to put the baseboards back on and finish the hall closet so we can put all its contents back. But we are so pleased with how well the whole floor turned out. I am very thankful for a husband who loves to work and learn new skills. He did an amazing job with all the angles in the kitchen. I am very grateful for children who were eager to help and did a great job listening and working hard. Some of my best memories are doing family projects whether it was the family garden or painting the kitchen or cutting wood. I am thankful my parents taught me the value of hard work and accomplishment and we are trying to teach our children the same. I think we can all be proud of how well our flooring adventure turned out!

Flooring Part 1

I'm gonna post our flooring adventure in more than one post. Our undertaking of new flooring has been quite a project for our family.
We decided to tear out all the flooring on the main level: all carpet and linoleum. The linoleum was the hardest part but luckily we had many helpers.

 Ellie loved helping the most I think. She worked side by side Spencer doing whatever he asked her to do. She got pretty good at taking heavy scraps and pulling staples.
Tate loved using the hammer even though it wasn't at the most helpful of times. But he made sure to do it himself, we couldn't help at all

The worst part of our project was pulling flooring from the mudroom and front entry. They were just small spaces and it was hard to maneuver tools and bodies. 






The next section we tackled was the kitchen; it was a beast! We had to do it over the space of several days. But once again, our kids were more than willing to help. Sometimes too willing and they got in the way! They really liked using the pry bar to pull up the floor pieces. Only having so many tools caused a problem in the sharing department.But eventually they worked it out and worked well together.

 This is the dining room the kids are working in. Tate loved using the Cat's Paw tool and sort of got the idea of it.
Ellie got pretty good at pulling out the staples from the under-lament. Which was just fine because this was the most annoying part.
Ayden did a good job bouncing around helping each of us. He would pull scraps out to the backyard or help Tate with a piece of floor.

After awhile, Tate got bored of helping and found better things to do: playing shooting game with the baseball bat and the hose sprayer from outside. Whatever works!

This is the living after Spencer pulled out all the carpet. Luckily, he had the day off work on Friday and was able to get a good chunk of the work done. I came home from work to no carpet. It was a happy sight for me because I've hated our gross carpet for quite a while.