Monday, June 8, 2015

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....

16 comments:

  1. Wow y'all have accomplished so much in a short time. Next time we intend to do our floors, I know who to call! :) Our DIY concrete floor renovation took 3 weeks! I hope yours doesn't last that long... At least Millie is looking like she is having a good time!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh Desiree, I wish it would take less than three weeks. I will probably take all summer. Millie has been a bit out of sorts with the upheaval of her castle.

      Delete
  2. Oh wow, what a cool project. I also love your bathroom. My husband does flooring professionally, so he can do tile and all that, and even then he won't redo our bathroom because it is too much work. So props to your husband for that.

    We had a flood in our basement last summer and had to take out our carpet like that. Holy crap, it is hard work, so I'm not surprised you lost some weight!

    Good luck with your reno!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The bathroom took about 6-7 weeks. My husband originally thought it would be a week or so...we were so naive. I am planning on this project taking all summer so I won't go crazy.

      Delete
  3. A loss is a loss!

    I do not envy you guys. We have redone all of the flooring on our top level and it has been such a nightmare. It looks ten million times better and was totally worth it, but it was so much hard work! Do you guys have the new flooring picked out yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am completely happy with .2 because with the craziness I figured I'd be up. We haven't picked the flooring yet, but need to soon so we can paint too.

      Delete
  4. Wow, what a project! That is something my DH & I are planning to do in the next couple of years and it was good to see what's in store for me. We're also on a concrete slab. And nice job on the loss this week.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We've talked about doing this for awhile and I was so anxious about the concrete, but so far so good. I can't wait to get to seeing the pretty part of the project!

      Delete
  5. Your bathroom looks amazing! I'm sure your new reno project will go great. We had that same exact linoleum in our kitchen in the house I grew up in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that was a pretty popular linoleum...we plan to replace it after we recover from this project :)

      Delete
  6. That green and red door is really interesting. :) It's always a little stressful, wondering what you'll find under old carpet. I'm glad it is turning out well so far!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha!Ha! Jessica, you can say it - the door is hideous! Those colors will not survive... I was so anxious before we started about what we found...even though the house is torn up I am a whole lot less anxious now that I have seen the concrete :)

      Delete
  7. Awesome! I bet it'll look amazing when it's done! your bathroom looks fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks - I still can't believe we did it :) Thankfully, my father-in-law has some mad skills to bail us out when we get in over our heads :)

      Delete
  8. All that is floor work definitely a workout in itself! Forget regular exercise on the days you're messing with it!

    ReplyDelete