Flooring

2 days, 2 IKEA trips, 4 Home Depot trips, $487, and a whole new den. 

Jeff took charge of ripping up the carpet. It was duuuuuuusssssty! Carpets are gross. I'm sorry, they just are.

Ta-da! The bandana isn't a fashion statement, I made him wear it as he was ripping up the dusty carpet. It does look good on him though... The wood subfloor underneath was in good condition, and fairly level, thankfully.

Our wonderful Jerod helped us install the whole thing. We thought at first that we could use Jerod's handheld jigsaw to make the cuts but it took awhile, got hot, and was messy so we decided to rent a table saw from Home Depot the next day. $40 for a day's rental was totally worth it. They only got through the first line on Wednesday night, and gave up in frustration because the click lock flooring refused to click or lock.

Day 2 they realized the board had a little nugget jammed in one of the grooves which made it not click seamlessly. Swapping out boards cured that and that's when they started to fly through the flooring.

Now THAT'S a saw. I think they were both pretty excited to use it. Jerod refused the mask and protective eye wear I offered, thankfully he still has his eyeballs. Jeffy has built in protective eye wear.

Progress!! This was exciting, getting past the 50% mark. They sent me back to IKEA for two more boxes of flooring around this point. My math was excellent by the way, they were just wasteful.

Victory dance!! All done!!

Not as pretty was the mess in the backyard. Might have to do a run to the recycling center...

We have nice existing molding that matches the rest of the house, so we opted against the IKEA matching molding and went with a quarter circle molding to cover the gap.  Molding around these angles was a nightmare so we just caulked the crap out of it and smoothed it out. We think it looks pretty good now, especially since the flooring is such a light color and the molding too is white, so the caulk blends right in.

Then we painted! We used a high gloss enamel from Mythic paint (no VOCs!) in a color called sidewalk gray. It looks so pretty against the floors, and the room is so bright with the huge side window, sliding door, and other window so it's nice to have a cooler hue on the walls. Jeff was a champ with the roller. My weenie little arms did about 4 swipes and got tired so I did most of the edging and paintbrush work. Yay teamwork! Can't wait for the furniture to get moved in!