Stair Upgrade

One of my goals before the baby comes was to get my stairs painted and carpeted. Happy to say, I did it!

And I even managed it before Christmas came.

It was a bit of a bear of a project, requiring quite a bit more carpet that I expected. In total I used four 2x8 foot runners to go the whole length of the stairs.

It was the turn at the bottom that really did me in. Lots of cutting and piecing together to make it work. So worth it in the end though. The stairs stay cleaner (though I have to vacuum them now instead of sweep) and the carpet muffles our steps which will be great once the baby is here. No errant steps waking the sleeping beast!

I used the classic, staple as you go method, which is holding up quite well. The key is using as many staples as you can to hold everything nice and tight.

One project down!

Cheers!

Floored: Part 2

We finished! And just in time for our Thanksgiving guests.

Here's the original before:

And the after:

The guest room before (sans carpet):

Now, with the new flooring:

We still need to add baseboards and moulding, paint, and style but things are looking much better down there!

Cheers!

Floored: Part 1

Yesterday we hit the half way point with our floor installation and it is looking darn good! After about 12 hours (including moving the furniture out and pulling out the old molding) we are done with the guest bed and half the hall.

Install is super easy due to the click and lock style of flooring we ended up with. Just like the cork in our kitchen you just snap everything together and it floats over your existing flooring.

We went with a felt underlayment for added warmth and sound cushioning. So far the most difficult thing has been cutting boards to go around (and under) the door jambs. I swear it takes twice as long as the rest of it.

I'll keep you updated on wear and tear but so far I love the stuff! Now it is just making me want to finish all of the other projects that need to happen down here… One thing at a time!

Anyone else install their own floors? I am super happy we decided to save the $1,000 or so and do it our selves.

Cheers!

It All Started with a Trip to Costco…

A few weeks back we went shopping to price out hardwoods for the downstairs. We had no plans to buy and hit up the usual places: Lumber Liquidators, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. A last minute decision that I needed Costco pizza and we stumbled on the best flooring deal I have ever seen!

This beautiful strand woven solid bamboo flooring was $2.03 sq/ft! Can you believe it? We snapped up 11 cases of it and have been letting it acclimate to our downstairs for the last week. Instalation begins this weekend. I'm stoked. This was one of my big "want to get done before the baby comes" items and it looks like we are well ahead of schedule. For once! 

Sometimes it pays to wander through Costco, just for the heck of it.

Cheers!

Grouting- The Final Frontier

This week I tackled grouting our bathroom floor. Not going to lie, I was scared. Really scared. But I pushed through and it all worked out in the end. Here are a few tips.

1. Take the time to make sure any mortar that pushed up through the grout lines is removed. This takes forever but it is worth it.

2. Work in small batches. I did 2 cups of grout mix at a time. which was about 1/4 of our 42 sq/ft bathroom floor.

3. Be prepared. Get everything ready and have extras. Extra gloves, water, etc.

4. It's going to be messy, and that's ok.

This was the scary part. I had my beautiful clean tile and then I dumped grout on it. (below you can see all three phases. Clean in the upper left, hazy in the upper right and freshly dumped grout on the bottom)

And then I freaked out.

Yeah. Not very pretty. But keep going. Just like the instructions say (I liked this series of tutorials btw) keep working that grout in to the grout lines and scraping away. It looks like a mess but it will clean up. I promise.

5.  Walk away. This was the hardest but, because I was working on the floor, I couldn't grout the whole thing at once if I had any hope of getting back in there to clean up. So I put my 2 cups worth of grout down, spread it around and then walked away for 15 min. That gave the grout time to set enough that I could form my grout lines (for a good explanation of this you can watch the video) and clean up. It still wasn't pretty but don't worry.

The first day I did half the floor, cleaned as much of the grout off the surface of the tiles as possible with my sponge (there was still a back haze) and then went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I used a damp sponge to clean off the last bit of haze. If you don't wait for things to dry a bit you just pull up the grout from where you want it and spread it around the top of the tiles. No good.

So pretty right?

It took two days but only about 3 hours of actual labor. Lots of waiting. Don't rush it. I still think it is scary (how on earth will I manage a vertical surface- the grout is like pudding!?!?) but at least now I know it can be done. We are tackling the shower this weekend so I'll let you know how it goes!

Anyone else have grouting tips? This was my first experience with mixing my own grout and it is a lot more liquid than the pre-mixed stuff. Good for the floor but I'm curious to see how it works on the walls.

Cheers!

Materials

Tile- Black and White Basket Weave from The Tile Shop
Grout- Un-sanded grout from Home Depot in Charcoal

 

Corking!

I have to say, I'm pretty amazed by us. When we put our minds to it we really get things done! (it helps when you can take a day off to work on them though). Between pounding out our herringbone tile back splash last week (still needs to be grouted) and this, I think we have officially graduated to DIY home owners. With the back splash and floor out of the way there are just a few little things to finish before our appraisal Wednesday.

So, without further ado-

Before

During

After

Fabulous! For the most expensive part of the project (they came in at $4.39 a sq/ft and we needed around 140 sq/ft) this was the easiest thing to do so far. Seriously. The worst was the moisture barrier (the black trash bag looking stuff in the above pictures). It would not lay flat for the life of me. Still, I would definitely recommend cork for anyone looking to update their floors. There are some great color options out there. We chose this one- Kentwood's Libson Burl Cork in "peat" -because it complimented the floors we already have. I thought about going a different route but had to face the fact that I would probably never get around to refinishing the floors.

 I love how warm it makes the room, which was getting a bit cool from all of the white. As for the processes? We just followed the manufacturer's directions (Young House Love has a good tutorial too) which was basically to slide the boards together and they lock. No adhesive, no nails. Awesome. After pulling up the last flooring I appreciate something that I can easily remove.

Tomorrow is the last day to get things up and painted so I will be back Wednesday with the big reveal. You probably noticed a few other upgrades we did (hardware "cough-cough", back door "ahem"). So happy to be finishing up!

Cheers!

There's Good News and Bad News

The good news is I'm almost done taking up the flooring in the kitchen!

The bad news? Most of it looks like this

Yeah, someone got pretty happy with a drill bit here. Looks like we will be putting down new flooring. The only question is what kind. Hopefully we will manage to get out today and go look at some but between plumbers coming to give quotes to move the gas line and the fact that technically it is a work day we will see. I'm kind of bummed, but new floors will be nice too.

It can't all be good news I guess.