Are We Really Doing This Again?

It is that time again. Time for another big DIY project. A couple of years ago we completely redid our bathroom

We started with this......

And ended up with this. My husband did all that tile work himself - it looks just as good close up!

It might have taken us a couple of years to recover, but we are ready to try another big one. We will be replacing 750 square feet of funky old carpet with wood laminate flooring. Saturday morning bright and early we made the first cut into the carpet.

I was so nervous about what we would find. Our house is built on a concrete slab. When we redid the bathroom floor my husband had to chisel off a thin sheet of plywood that was secured to the concrete. I was dreading the weeks of work it would take to do that throughout the whole house.  I was super excited to see these wood tiles pop right out. They reminded me of a slide puzzle.

There was a moment of panic when I saw this black funk. Mold??? Thankfully, it turned out to be the adhesive while had deteriorated.

Oringinally, we planned to do the whole house at one time. However, by the time we had moved and removed furniture in the living/dining room a bajillion times, we decided we would tackle the bedrooms after the floor is finished in the living/dining room. Then we will move everything from the bedrooms to the living room one time.

I spent several hours with the shop vac. After we took out the parquet flooring there were piles of dirt and black dust.

By the end of the first day all of this funk was out of the house. No matter how clean you think your house is when you get the carpet outside you realize it is so dirty and smelly. I am thrilled to have it gone!!

The second day I tackled the entry way - don't be jealous of our green door with the red trim. All the trim will be replace too :)  I was nervous this linoleum would be like the bathroom, but it was on top of parquet and rolled right up :)

At some point, someone built a wall to separate part of the living room into a little office (currently the command center). We discovered they built the wall right on top of the carpet and parquet. Now we have to leave that little bit under the wall or there would be about 3/4 of an each gap under the wall. There was some pretty labor intensive of trimming next to the wall.

I will be honest. I was pretty worn out by Sunday and might have gotten a bit grouchy at times. I definitely needed a little sanity break. I decided to turn one of our carpet rolls into an homage to the PDX carpet guy. You can see Pee Dee a mascot of sorts made from the old Portland airport carpet on Running to Get Waisted's blog. Apparently many Portlanders were quite attached to that carpet. I think at this point Millie is a little embarrassed to be my dog :)  But it was a good diversion and helped me get back in the groove for a whole lot more work! For the record we are not keeping a single scrap of that funky carpet!

We had a small leak in the hallway that also needed to be repaired. First, my husband insulated the duct work above the leak area. It seemed that condensation from the a/c was leaking into the ceiling/wall.

 My husband did a nice job of repairing it. This is the first coat of tape and mud waiting to be sanded and remudded.

Sunday night our living room had this lovely concrete floor. We had watched several YouTube videos about preparing a concrete slab for wood laminate floor installation. I was terrified we would have fill miles of cracks and do serious leveling. Turns out the concrete is in great shape. We have just a few issues to address.

We were officially exhausted. It has been a grueling weekend. I am very proud of how much we got accomplished.

What does all this have to do with weight loss and fitness?  

When you are that busy you don't have time for snacking. It would also be a major operation to clean up enough to grab snacks. We were filthy. 

It has been a two day long workout. Moving furniture. Pulling up flooring, Carrying everything outside. More furniture moving. Vacuuming. Bending. Crawling.  We did it all. 

However, with the house in such turmoil it was easy to grab food one our many trips to Home Depot or the hardware store. Thankfully, all the exercise and minimal snacking helped me to a .2 pound loss.

I am determined to do what I can to keep this project from giving me a licence to eat terribly. More about that tomorrow....