Probably not the smartest thing I have ever done, but with basically two weeks left in my summer break, I decided to install in our living room and dining room the laminate flooring we purchased about two years ago (maybe three years ago).
To start, I moved all of our living room and dining room furniture out of those rooms and “stored” it in our family room. This just added an extra bit of chaos to our already chaotic lives.
Next, I pulled up all the carpet and underlay from the living room/dining room floors. For this task I think I was pretty clever because I cut the carpet into three foot wide strips. That made it much easier to carry outside. Getting smarter in my advanced years! If I was really smart I would hang a sign on the old carpet saying “free” and have someone else take away what I’m probably going to have to pay to get rid of.
Then I started doing the “prep” work. This is the stuff that takes forever and is really tedious but makes the actual “doing the job” much easier and simpler.
I spent a day bent doubled over pulling staples and nails from the plywood flooring. Ugly work but it sure does make the finished project look and feel better!
And then, because renovation projects are like this, the words “well seeing as you have the floors out, why not…”
So now I’m prepping the walls for a fresh coat of paint. You know, remove all the outlet covers, dab filler into the picture hanger holes in the walls, taping up window sills…and so on.
And well seeing as you have the tv out of the room, why not put in one of those wall mount tv things? “Project creep” is setting in. Big time.
“You know, the dishwasher is broken and it has the ugly floor in front of it…” so now I remove laminate flooring from kitchen floor. And under the laminate flooring is old school “parkay” flooring.
The parkay actually comes up and out pretty easily. But then the question is, what do we put back in place of the laminate flooring in the kitchen? And what about that broken down dishwasher?
We don’t have enough laminate to do the living room, dining room AND kitchen so…back to the flooring store.
No luck there. The company that made our flooring was bought by another company and they discontinued that line of flooring. Used flooring stores don’t have any in stock.
So what to do? A different colour of laminate for the kitchen? Or vinyl plank? Porcelain tiles? Or maybe vinyl sheet flooring (read that as linoleum). Every option has more negatives than there are positives. Ugh.
It got so frustrating that I eventually said to my buddy, “I’m just about ready to just paint the plywood and be done with this project!”
To which he said, “That’s sort of what my neighbor did.”
Which sent me to Pinterest and YouTube to learn more about different ways of finishing floors.
I’ll update you on what option I have decided to use once I know what I’m doing! Tomorrow is another day of prep work. And I’ve also quite wisely decided to encourage my wife and kids to take a few days away from home – they were already learning too much colourful language! With them away I’ll be able to get a few more hours of work a day done.
Stay tuned for what tomorrow will bring! It is decision day!