Friday, December 09, 2011

New Flooring

A few months ago I posted a story about how my wife felt compelled to change our fire place. I mentioned at the end of that post that since the fireplace looked so good I was now going to have to change the rest of the of the room. The story of begats, one project begets another.

When Lauren and I first moved into this house we kind of agreed we would not tackle a remodel of the Family Room until our boys were old enough to not pee on the floor or furniture. We kind of agreed that before  re-do of our main hang-out space our boys would not do things like this...
or this...
Both courtesy of Jackson.

We felt we did not want to spend the time, energy or money on new furniture, paint and flooring only to have them ruined by rambunctious boys and bodily fluids. But then Lauren went and built a new mantle.

The Family Room mantle went from this,

to this.


No amounts of urine, vomit, eggs, paint and dog hair could make the rest of the room look any less attractive than it did compared to Lauren's awesome work on the mantle piece. The time had come to begat the Family Room.

Last week I took a week vacation from work to, well, work. I tore out the old carpets and padding that were there for at least 20 years. If I did not get cancer from years of  cigarette smoking, I am pretty sure I will get it from the nastiness that was in and under that carpet. We removed all the old trim, painted the walls, re-ran the cable wires, bought a new couch, added new freshly painted trim and moulding and....and...and...I installed laminate flooring. I am very proud of my work.



The first thing that the boys did after I finished the floor was to put on socks and "ice skate" for a few hours. They only chipped a small piece of the new floor so far.

I hope I will eventually post a complete "after" picture including the couch and the area rug before someone takes a Sharpie to them.

5 comments:

Michelle said...

replace all the Sharpies in your house with Dry Erase markers. Then get a huge bottle of Dry Erase cleaner. It's saved my children's hides more than once.
The room looks lovely! great job on the floor. Lauren's mantle is definitely the showpiece of the room.

Melinda said...

Good flooring work. The room looks great already. I love before and after pictures!
You should start a raffle for who can guess correctly which child, which weapon, and where the first damage takes place. You could donate the money made to charity or use it to repair the first damage.
I would like to place a bet for 5 dollars.

inklenaomi said...

Hooray for the remodel! and what are you thinking, owning sharpie markers with preadolescent boys in the house? am I to believe that none of them have left the house with a sharpie 'stashe? You are living on the edge.

jcbrown208 said...

Looks fabulous. Great job and happy flooring. As for the Sharpies, well life isn't complete without Sharpies so the boys will eventually know their limits....eventually....maybe...

Kathy said...

Good job! Your family room looks so much better with the laminate flooring. This type of flooring is pretty durable, so don't worry too much about your boys ruining them. Just make sure spills are cleaned up immediately to avoid any accidents.


Kathy Carbone