Boom! New Vinyl Floors!

We all remember this right? 12x12 peel and stick tile.

Well last week for two nights Kris and I tag teamed ripping them up; one.by.one.  It was painful and I have a blister the size of a quarter on my palm to prove it.  We had to use a torch to warm them up to lessen the sticky mess.  One person on the torch, the other person using a driveway ice scraper.  It sucked.

So we ended up with this.  Many different levels of flooring.  At different points in time it appears different things were replaced/patched.  So we got everything on one level.  The floor was soo sticky!  It was a workout just walking across the floor.  Poor PK hated it; he kept getting stuck!

With the vinyl flooring laid out I marked and cut what we needed in the kitchen.  The tape was about 1 1/2 wide and I cut just outside of it to give ourselves extra wiggle room.  For the laundry room I ended up cutting right on the tape line; we found out that we didn't need as much extra as we had planned for in the kitchen.  This marked out plan seemed to work for us.  The only trouble was that we had left our kitchen sticky with the thought that we then wouldn't have to put glue on this piece.  So you were committed when you decided where it was going.  We basically started under the window and worked ourselves across the room.  If only someone could have got a video of the two of us... Oh boy.  I'm sure it was quite the scene with us balancing the remaining vinyl on our bodies as we pushed on our butts/stomachs the vinyl down as we went across!!  We were sore to say the least.  Ugh.  Like whole body sore.

Beautiful!  

As you notice from all pictures the break chair and shop vac have came in handy for this house remodel project :)

This is the laundry room before.  As you can see more of the same story from the kitchen.  Not pretty.  More flooring all over the place.

It also had a sink we had been using to clean up paint.  We decided the sink had to go rather than mess with trying to fix it up.  Well what a mess.  The hot water line wasn't hooked up so thankfully we had shut off the hot water almost immediately when we took possession! We would have had one heck of a mess.  Also the base was basically nailed into the floor at some point in the past with multiple levels of flooring that were built around it.  The plaster basically shattered when we tore it off the wall; so we had some drywall work to do.  We also had to patch in a lot of plywood in the laundry room to make it level.  We went ahead and used some fiber glass boards on the walls that were heavily damaged in there to clean it up.

Yesterday Kris got a new hot water heater back in, I got started painting in here and we got the fiberglass boards up.

State Fair!

Immediately when we got there we had to head straight for the John Deere booth.  On the way there PK said "I find farmer and ride on his tractors".  Well bud, John Deere display will have to do.  There wasn't any looking at anything else until he had sat in every one.  He was almost too excited to really enjoy it though, each time in a tractor was less than 30 seconds.

Giving Mom a ride on a 4 wheeler

Only stuck his head in one display this year and I had to be quick.

Helping Hands on the Farm.  Awesome set-up for the kids.  I'm sure he didn't understand it but it was cool for him to be able to do.  He got a little distracted while we were going through because the race cars were starting and was more concerned about going home to get his headphones so he could go see the race cars!

We had a pretty nice evening out there.  Were wore out when we came home.  Got there a little before 5 and left around 8.  Plenty of time for all of us.

Kitchen and Doors

New backdoor

New front door (and helper)

Kitchen counter tops and tile!

I am beyond excited about the kitchen updates! I love the new counter tops with the white cabinets.  We got the tile from Menards from a discontinued line they had and it worked perfectly.  I told Kris I want to replicate all of it at our house now.  Loving it!  

More pictures of the counter tops and kitchen to come.  We were rushing out the door with normal PK patience so I grabbed a quick picture as I was on my way out to a unruly toddler ready for nap!

Weekend Plans - Kitchen!

Kitchen before - walking in from back door area

I showed this progress a couple weeks ago.  But since then we have got the ceiling, walls and trim painted, microwave put in, double oven put in and cabinet doors hung back up.

This weekend the plan is to install countertops, backsplash and get the floors prepped for linoleum.  It's already looking so much brighter in there!  I'm really excited to see how the kitchen is going to turn out!  I've got a lot of touch up work to do on the cabinet doors.  Someone might have been rushing to hang them up before I got the edges done... 

We are soo ready for this new adventure to be done!  It's been a lot of work, a lot of sweat, a few fights but mostly a learning experience.  If we don't know what we are doing, we watch a couple You Tube videos and go for it!  It's going to be so nice when we can settle back into a "normal" routine.  Someday soon hopefully.

Progress

Living Room before

Living Room progress

The living room still needs the trim finished (we took the quarter round off to refinish the floors and put tape up.  Well the tape when pulled off, took big chunks of paint off the trim. Little, tiny bit upset about that!!  So I'm not touching up until we get the quarter round painted and re-installed.  We also have a new ceiling fan to put up in there.

Bedroom before

Lots of pink!

Bedroom progress

Same story as the living room.  Trim and ceiling fan.  We also had a slight mishap with the closet doors and it looks like we will need to find some new ones now.

Hallway looking towards living room

Hallway looking back towards the bathroom