House projects

 Over the summer, my mom mentioned that flooring in my kitchen needed updated (she was done bumping her toes as she went from one room to the next).  It was on my "want to do" projects.  When we moved in, we first removed wooden posts, shelves, and other accent wood which made doorways smaller and created a "rustic" look.  Unfortunately, flooring had been added around them.  This created weird missing pieces of flooring and uneven seams between the living room and dining room as well as the living room and hallway.  It was a toe killer for many however I think that I only made this mistake once ;)

We removed these wood accents.  

Here is what is looked like before from the other side.

So Tim and I decided in August to rip up part of the hallway flooring to see what was really under there and in hopes of finding more original hardwood.  Neither of us are carpenters, but we found scrapers and crowbars and hammers and started on this adventure.   First was a layer of gray "sticky" square tile.  This revealed wooden under flooring.  However, I felt that there was more!  So we pulled that up and found crazy 80's brown laminate.  This was over another layer of much older laminate.   There is a wood layer or two under this original laminate, but it was not accessible.  When we pulled up the layers, we were left with a greenish felt like product.  Well the hallway stayed in this state of ripped up yuck for way to many months.  

Here are most of the floors - the dots are original then the 80s then the wood then the grey floor

Hallway before with the honey doors and grey floors.

We looked for tile, hardwood, etc... not sure what we were looking for.  Quickly, we decided "wood like" products were out as we had beautiful original hardwood in the living room, dark kitchen cabinets, and honey wood colored doors in the hallway.  The new floor had to match all three since we planned to do the hallway/kitchen/dining room in a matching floor like it was already.  I am not much of an interior decorate or a color matching expert.  However, we looked and researched.  Our first contact was a hard wood expert who stated that the hallway was just plywood and not hard wood.  BUMMER!
Next was flooring places and AR websites.  I found one that I loved.  It was one of the more expensive ones that looked like stone with a variable array of browns and oranges and the grout was extra and I like the look with grout too!

Fast forward, school started and remote learning bouts and life and Covid restrictions.  Tim even priced out another floor at another location, but my favorite was the cheapest in the end.  As soon as we knew the date of install, then we had to the demo of the kitchen and dining room.  I wanted to wait as long as possible since I knew that exposed plywood and felt stuff were NOT sanitary.  YUCK really. 

So fast forward to Saturday afternoon.  I start chipping away at the last few feet of hallway which have had been rocking the 80's tile and was right next to the kitchen.  The children helped and Tim pulled up the wood and sticky tile layer with the help of our 13 year old.  Our five and eight year olds loved pulling up nails.  I kept chipping away at the 80's and original tile inch by inch.  It was a SLOW process.  We worked for about 8 hours minus a quick pause for church.  At midnight, I admitted defeat and went to bed.  The next morning following time change, we started again. Based on the rate of work, I knew that I had 9 hours of tearing up left as well as a COVID vaccine and a promise to stop at the maple tour in the area.  So we all headed out to keep my appointment and our promise.  

Progress

The slow messy process

In the meantime, my dad got word of this slow process and found a possible solution online - a bigger long handled scraper usually used for ice.  He loves a good project and helping us out...so he joined the fun.  Well that tool was so much faster than my little scraper, hammer, and crowbar system.  It was all out in about 2 hours.   This meant we had extra time to try to remove the yucky gray felt stuff with the door wide open for ventilation.    Water initially didn't penetrate the felt...we tried goo gone and baking soda.  Tim re-tried the watered area after 30+ minutes and it came up!  It left a yucky slimy residue behind.  We figured out to squeegee the goop up then wipe it with a rag to clean up the remaining goopy gluey stuff.  YUCK...smell was terrible as the old glue finally broke down.  Fast forward, we ate a picnic in 40 degree weather with grilled hamburgers and waffle fries and FROZE.  

The slime stage 

Almost ready for new floors

Ready to go

By bed time, the kitchen was done, clean up was done, and bed was calling.  Monday was a normal day minus vaccine side effects for me (Headache and tired).  Tuesday was the new floor.  We learned that the felt didn't actually have to come up.  New underlayment and the beautiful new tile give the room new life.  Now we hope to add some new storage type pieces to finish off the room and newer matching curtains and curtain rods.    

Before shot

After shot from the same angle (sort of)

New and improved hallway

Another angle of the new floor

Labor of love...but a 25 year guarantee and a beautiful product means that we should not have to repeat this process.  This was a bigger project than I expected.  However, the pay out is awesome!  Transition strips are added...not more stubbed toes...not more missing flooring....it matches (previous gray floor didn't really match the rooms)...a big project done together as a family...creating memories...both the kids saved chunks of the 80's laminate as a memory of the old floor.