New Kitchen Floors!

Before

 I have been meaning to write this post for a while but I kept forgetting to take an after shot to show. Well I finally gave up on the kitchen being clean enough to take the picture and went ahead and took the photo today.

Replacing the kitchen floor has been on our to do list for a loooonngg time. The old linoleum floor was stained, dated and showed dirt really easily. We debated floor type for the new kitchen floor for a long time. We needed something water proof, durable, and hopefully pretty. I originally wanted tile but our house is so uneven it would have been a nightmare to install. We ended up going with vinyl plank flooring and I have to say I am very please with the results! Vinyl flooring sure has come a long way in recent years!

After

Eric's parents came down to help us with the install (thanks Don and Jody!) and Eric and his dad had to do a good deal of replacing sub flooring that was water damaged. The vinyl flooring is floating and locks together so once the sub floor was fixed it was relatively easy to put in.

We love love love the new floor, it makes the whole kitchen look more polished and it is holding up really well so far. Next on the to do list for the kitchen is replacing the base boards and quarter round and repainting the upper cabinets/replacing their hardware. Eventually we want to replace the backsplash too but with so much going on in our lives right now who knows when we will get to it.

Getting the House in Gear

After we had kids our work on the house stagnated quite a bit. It's so hard to find time and energy to do the updates we want to do when we have two little ones that need our constant attention. Well this year we are buckling down and committing to getting some stuff done around here. Some of it we will be doing ourselves and some of it we will bite the bullet and just hire someone to do.

The first step was getting a garage door opener for my side of the garage (a big thanks to my in-laws for giving me this for Christmas!). Neither of us used to park in the garage and Eric still doesn't but after I got my shiny new car I didn't want to park it in the driveway under all those trees any more. Having to get in and out of the car to open the door was a pain though, especially with two kids. Having a garage door opener installed is such a little thing but will make a huge difference in my everyday life.

Our next step will probably be to work on finishing up our kitchen renovation which has been limping along for years. We are looking at new flooring (see flooring samples in the photo above) and finishing the paint and updated hardware on the upper cabinets. After that we will think about redoing the back splash.

We also have a million other things on our list to tackle this year but I think we are making good first steps. It's exciting to have house renovations to look forward to and I can't wait to get some of things done that I have been wanting to do for years. So be on the look out for big changes in our house this year, all to be documented here on the blog.

Echo's New Room

At long last Echo's big girl room is complete! This was one of the major things we had to do to get ready for the new baby and we have been planning and talking about it for so long that we are really excited to finally get it done. We plan to put the new baby in the nursery (Echo's old room) because it is right across the hall from us and has easy night time access for me. Echo has been sleeping really well lately making it less important for her to be right next to us so moving her to the other room just made sense. I didn't want them sharing a room at this point because I'm afraid the baby will wake Echo up and don't want to mess with her sleep.  

Before

The biggest thing we had to do in this room was get rid of the nasty carpet (as seen in the before picture). Eric's parents came down last weekend to help us work on it and they knocked the whole thing out in just two days! The new floor looks amazing, it really makes me want to do the rest of the rooms that haven't been done yet but it is a huge pain so who knows when that will happen.

My contribution to the room was a mural by Echo's floor bed. I originally really wanted to do this room in a nautical theme (mostly because I wanted to paint a nautical mural) but I could see that Echo really didn't care about under sea stuff as much as I do so in the end I tried to make it something she would enjoy more. She loves to help me in the garden and loves animals so I did some sunflowers and a rabbit for her. She is so proud of this mural and loves the rabbit in particular. She often goes up to it and pats it or gives it kisses, so cute!

This room feels so much more open and it has been fun watching her get used to it. She spent her first night in her new room last night and she slept great in spite of my worries about her adjusting to a new space.

I'm so happy to have her moved in because now she will have plenty of time to think of this as her room before the baby comes and takes over her old room! We still have a few of her things to move in and Eric is building some shelves in her closet but other than that the room is done. Yay!

Flooring=Finished!

We are getting closer and closer to our goal of moving in by April first. The house is looking so amazingly good, it's a world of difference from when we first bought the place. It now smells of sawdust and new paint and is feeling fresh and clean. Today Eric and the crew were able to finish installing our new floors and I couldn't be happier with them, they look amazing! We still have to put the baseboards back on and add a little extra trim but just having the new flooring down makes the house feel so inviting, so much better than the yucky carpet! Here are a few pictures of the finished floors in the dining room. More updates to come by the end of the weekend :-)

Getting ready to start the final stretch of flooring

Annndd.. done!

So pretty!

Mid-Week Mini Update

We made our first trip out to work on the house in the middle of the week tonight. I have to say I was surprised by how quickly the drive from work all the way in Decatur went by, traffic wasn't that bad and it seemed like I got there in no time. Eric had headed out Earlier in the day to try to get some work on the floors done since we will have to return the nail gun soon and our wonderful friend Adam came and helped a ton with that! By the time I got they had so much more done than i thought they would, it seems like they are pros at this flooring stuff now! By the time we left tonight they had finished the living room and hall and now all that's left is to do the dining room and the trim of course. I spent the evening unpacking and organizing and we all ended the night with a little impromptu dance party on the super slick floors. Here are some updated pictures of the flooring, please pardon the construction/moving mess. 

Adam snapped some pictures of us dancing and I was able to capture some of his epic break dancing moves :-) This floor is just too great not to dance on. I'm sure I will have more updates for you all this weekend, stay tuned!

Floors, Glorious Floors!

We finally got to start installing our new floors this weekend! And by "we" I mean Eric, Don, my Dad and Adam. I wasn't available to help at all with the house on Saturday because I was shooting a wedding with Joanna for our photography company Everything Nice Photography and it ate up my whole day (although it was exhausting it was a great day and we got amazing photos). By the time I showed up on the scene they were well on their way so I just decided to stay clear of the floor installation ;-) So I didn't even get to see what was happening with the house until Sunday morning but when I did see it, wow! The new floors look absolutely amazing so far. By the end of the weekend they had finished most of the living room, next weekend they will be working on the hallway and dining room. We were once again incredibly lucky to have our parents help us out and we were able to borrow a nail gun from some neighbors of Eric's parents which saved us a ton of money. This makes me so excited to get moved in, check out the pictures:

I am so beyond thrilled with how they are turning out. I really feel that we made the right choice going with the bamboo, it sure beats the nasty carpet that was there when we bought the place. I can't wait to live in this amazing house!

Setbacks, Delays and a Little Progress

So we were sooo excited to put in our new floors this weekend but unfortunately it didn't happen for two reasons.

First of all we ended up deciding to go with bamboo flooring for the whole house, after doing some research we decided this was the best compromise between cost, durability and good looks and we are still really happy we decided to go with the bamboo. We had a tough time deciding this though and we waffled on what kind of floors to get right up until the last minute so we weren't able to plan for the installation as much as we would have liked. The thing about bamboo is that it is a fiber and can expand and contract quite a bit depending on the climate it is in. because of this you have to leave a little room around the edges of your room when laying your bamboo floors so that they can grow if they need to. It is also recommended that the flooring sits in the room it will eventually live in for about 3 days before you install it so that it can acclimate to the space (this is supposed to cut down on the amount that it will swell). Well, darn... so we can't put the bamboo in for another 3 days, which basically means we can't put it in until next weekend since we have no time during the week.

The second snag we hit was that our sub floors are crazy. When we first pulled up the carpet we discovered that someone had put down a layer of particle board on top of the plywood that makes up the main sub floor. God knows why, the people who built this house were insane. So as it turns out you can't install bamboo flooring over particle board, ugh! So the poor men, (Eric, Don, My Dad and our friend Adam) spent the whole weekend pulling up all the particle board in the living area. Luckily the bamboo we bought is exactly the same thickness as the particle board so when it goes down the floor will be the same height. It actually works out well too because it gave us a chance to reinforce a lot of the squeaky areas on the floor so it is all for the best but it's frustrating to have the delay when we were so excited.


We did make some progress this weekend however (other than pulling up particle board of course). We painted the two remaining bedrooms so now all that is left to paint is the bathrooms, yay! I'll be excited to check painting off my list, I'm getting kind of sick of it to be honest :-)

So here are some pictures from this weekend just so that Ya'll can see what's going on with the house now:

Our new flooring neatly stacked in boxes and getting acclimated to the space

This is what the floor we chose looks like, we think it will really make the living room and dining room sparkle

Boys tearing up the particle board on top of our sub floors

Guest bedroom all finished being painted, we choose a lovely light gray for this room

Guest bedroom again

Master bedroom-painting finished. The dark gray really modernized this room.

I have to give a great big shout out to Mom, Dad, Logan, Don, Jody, Adam and Joanna for all their help this weekend. We have awesome friends and family! We love you guys! Also an extra special thank you to my parents for cooking everyone an amazing dinner on Saturday night. We had an awesome time drinking wine and just hanging out with everyone after a hard day of work. Looking forward to living in the house and hosting dinners of our own to repay the favor :-)

Flooring Update

We had another busy weekend of working away on the house. Eric and his dad did a lot of repairs on the sub floor to prepare for our hardwood floor installation (which we will be attempting next weekend). Here are few photos from the process.

Eric in the middle of sub floor repairs. There was quite a bit of water damage near the sliding glass doors so Eric and Don pulled out the whole section and replaced it.

Don drilling the new sub floor in place

We made a trip to Floor and Decor out in Kennesaw this weekend to research flooring. I think we have decided to go with this red oak. 

Another big accomplishment this weekend was shampooing the carpets in the bedrooms and the loft. We can't really afford to put hardwood in the whole house right away and the carpets in some of the rooms are in decent shape so we are leaving them there for a bit. I can't believe what a big difference it made to have the carpets cleaned (thanks Jody!). Here are some pictures of the freshly cleaned carpets.

Master bedroom carpet

It almost looks new! Awesome!

loft carpet

We are so excited to put in our hardwoods next weekend. I think the space will really look amazing after this step, can't wait to share the results with everyone!