Floored

Going to look at flooring for the bathroom today.... with hopes of finding something for the long holiday weekend at the end of the month. 

Thoughts?

Hot is having shoulder surgery at the end of the month so this will be his last project before months and months of recovery.  We decided to make it a fun one.  :)  We aren't tackling the laundry room/kitchen/dining.... just the bathroom.

The bathroom has a lot of angles and corners and isn't squared so a snap-in style will be better than sheet stuff.  Not sure what options we have in a bathroom for that.....

If prices are good we might get a new toilet and vanity/sink.  Not touching the tub.... even though my forever goal is to have a tub where my knees and my boobs are under water at the same time.  That seems like too much to do in a 3-day weekend. 

I have light grey walls.  I'd like a dark grey floor.  But I'm thinking I should be careful because the living room floor is dark brown and eventually this will probably be what we get for the rest of the house that meets up with the dark brown... dark brown next to dark grey might not be so good.  How about a medium slate-looking grey?  And dark grey countertops in the kitchen? 

Off to houzz.com to look at images......

I have no idea how to remove/replace/reseal a toilet.... so I will be googling that next.

Brown Floors

In case you forgot about this stupid project......  While I am proud of myself for redoing the floors for $25 (we'll get to that later) instead of dropping thousands on carpet.... it was not a project for the faint of heart. 

Carpet out.  Check.

Tack strip removed.  Check.

Staples pulled.  Check.

Forget to fill screw holes.  Check.

 Pellet stove removed. Check.

Floors swept. Check.

Floors cleaned. Check.

Floors cleaned with nasty cleaner.  Check.

Thinking to self... WHY did the paint in with this odd color?  WHY?  I liked the "aged brown" look.

 Tape.  Check.

Brushes.  Check.

Rollers.  Check.

Begin process.  

Primer.

Using Brownstone oil-based paint (leftover).  Remember how horrible it smells and how long it takes to dry.

 Here you can actually see everythign.... old brown paint, old reddish paint, primer & new oil brown paint.

At this point I realized I might not love the glossy brown paint.  It is just so... glossy.  And the dog hair clings to it.  Like.  Really.  So I got frustrated and started a new project.  The steamer is rusty.  See that?  So I primed with grey heat-proof paint.

Discovered I really hate glossy paint.  Went to Lowe's.  For $25 I got a gallon of not-glossy LATEX floor paint.  Same brand and color.  Mmmm.  Pretty.  Here are my kids wandering around the house like monkeys trying to stay off the new floor.

 

Old, New and New-new.

 Decided I like the steamer grey for now.

And then there is the hearth.  It is pink.  A new one is $350.  Do I splurge?  Do I live with it?  Do I spray paint it?  WTF?

It goes here.  Also.... still trying to find a cute tv console in my price range to store games.  Sigh.  Turns out I don't have a final-final picture.  Maybe later.

What it looks like now.....

Funny story about the pink rug.... so I tore out the old carpet and hauled in the brown rug I had carefully washed and spread on the porch to dry.... then I left for the weekend.  I came home Sunday night to a house that smelled.... awful.  Just awful.  Like, "we have to move" awful.

I had one little corner of carpet that was still intact so I tore it out hoping that was the problem.... in the process I stepped on the brown rug.  And realized.  It.  Was.  The.  Problem.

Hot has a theory. He thinks the neighbor's tom cat came over and sprayed it while it was on the porch.  I have no idea how I managed to carry it in the house without noticing.... although I did use a drag method and not actually hug it to my body... that's my excuse.  

So here it is.... carpet free and mostly scrubbed.

We have gone back and forth about refinishing vs carpet.  I don't know what to do.  Here's the challenge to refinishing... this strip of subfloor between the kitchen and 

Also... changed out the entertainment center.... Elle... this is what I am debating painting....

Ugly former entertainment center... worth spray painting?  Turn into kid kitchen?  Send to donation pile?

Keep it like this??

What do YOU do when you hubby goes out of town????

June 8, 2012.  This is my house on a typical Friday night....  BUT.  This was the first time EVER that I'd been home overnight BY MYSELF.  No husband.  No kids.  Hot was on a fire in Melstone and the kids were at Grandma & Grandpa's because we had no daycare. 

And then this happened...

And oh my HELL.... is that DIRT?  Sifty silt.  Horrified.

Good bye pink carpet..... goodbye.....

Holy PEE spots.  Ack.  Ew.  Ugh.  Yes, I washed the clothes I was wearing with color-safe bleach and a double rinse.  And a discovery..... there were spots in places the dog hasn't been... like under furniture.  So, possibly, he has been, in his senile way, marking his territory.  UPDATE:  Dog has not peed on floor since carpet came out.  It is a MIRACLE.  I am no longer going to put "designer of doggy diapers" on my resume due to my stylish manufacturing of adult undergarments from ace bandages and baby diapers....  Now who wants the size 1 Target diapers I have left over?

Here's one of those "Oh shit, what have I done" moments. 

The brown in the middle isn't bad... not loving the reddish stuff they painted the edges with... and all the white stuff seems to come off with scrubbing....

Stay tuned..... there is more to the story.....

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, here, here, here, here 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.