Monday, May 30, 2011

Because we KNOW how to have fun......

We got crazy a few weeks ago..... I came down the stairs and Hot was sitting in the recliner.... one hand on the carpet cleaner and the other holding a sheetrock knife.  He was staring at this corner.  You can see which plan won out......

First came the emptying of the armoire.  Then the moving of the furniture.  Then tearing the carpet.   THE SMELL.  I love my dog but the senile old shithead has been pissing in the corner.  Ew. 


I cleaned it up but there were a lot of things going on..... strange floral stuff..... what is that?  It is wood.  And the little bits and pieces..... explains why the floor rolls....


Here's a shot the captures it all.... grey, red, dull red, floral, unpainted.  And the chocolate brown stuff that I painted last summer.

You can see that project here, herehere, herehere and here.


At this point we had two options..... we could paint the floor a lovely chocolate brown.  We have the paint.  We have the primer.  It takes WEEKS to dry and smells like hell.  Or we can do some sort of manufactured flooring.... Due to the uneven floors we are afraid to do true laminate but there are some vinyl options.... so off to Lowe's we go.....


 And home we come with 4 boxes of 6x36 vinyl planks.  We start install.  We've done this before.  We put laminate flooring in our house in town.  We are a team.  This stuff is crazy.... it isn't anchored AT ALL to the floor.  The planks just stick to each other.  There should be a 1/8" space all the way around to allow for expansion and contraction.  We couldn't do that because there is no trim on the walls with the paneling.  So we shoved it in hard and played with it..... sounds familiar, doesn't it??  Hot put down the lines and I opened boxes, laid out the rows, took off protective paper and picked up the tape papers he was tossing.  We should have put down a chalk line and we should have used carpet tape to hold things firm but we used the lines of the existing floor as a guide and since it was shoved in solid we didn't use tape. 


It went in super-fast.  Our space is 5'x13+' so it wasn't big.  This stuff is easy to cut.... you use a straight edge and score it with a sheetrock knife and then snap it.  Easy.



And here it is all in and the furniture back in place.  The transitions took some time.... specifically getting up the guts to make the angled cuts.  We used two big pieces of transition and one small. 



Now for the juicy budget breakdown....  We spent about, eh, $50 or so on transition.... two 6' and one 3' pieces... we had two doorways and the angle seen above.  We returned the carpet tape (but it would have cost us $10) and we used 3 boxes of planks (about $37 each).  We would have spent that much in carpet cleaner in short order so I think it was worth it.  It has been several weeks and it still looks good.  The material is Surface Source Classic Chestnut and can be found at Lowe's.

1 comment:

Elle said...

I love it.

Do those rugs slide around? It makes me feel like a 100 year old woman, but I'm a little afraid of throw rugs . . . I'm afraid I'll slip and fall on them and constantly bending down to straighten them makes my back hurt. Do yours stay put? Do you have that sticky stuff on the backs?