Rockstar

I thought I would update you guys on our progress.  Alot has gone on the past few days even though it doesn't really look like it in these pics.  One of the biggest surprises (for me at least) out of this whole project was how long it took to prep the subfloor.  I was definitely naive enough to envision just rolling up the carpet and gluing down some hardwood.  Umm not so much!  We were lucky enough to have my wonderful brother-in-law come visit us for a long weekend and he helped us get alot of the dirty work done...he was a total rockstar and worked extremely hard while he was here.  I kind of felt bad, but not really because we def need all the help we can get :)  Here was his first job...

No it is not snowing inside our house.  This is just a beautiful photo of the drywall dust we were breathing in all day.  Another little awesome fact I was previously unaware of...after you scrape the popcorn ceilings there is still some residue that gets stuck all over it.  Also, some of the drywall tape gets peeled away and the places you nick have to be sanded before you can paint.  I learned this lesson the hard way after deciding to skip this step (because I was over it) and just go ahead and paint the laundry room.  I will not be posting a pic of that because it is pretty embarrassing--but just know that the sanding is definitely a necessary step.  Thankfully Chad decided to go after this first thing and got a couple of ceilings sanded.  They look amazing!

Meanwhile, I decided to attack all of that glue that I posted about before that was stuck all over the floor from the old carpet.  I got some acid from Lowe's and spent the entire morning pouring it on and then scraping and rubbing over it with a scrub brush and vacuuming it up.  Enter my new best friend....THE SHOP VAC!  I could devote another entire post to how much I now love that thing but I will spare you guys.  I also decided to clear everything out to make room for the big floor installation.  I was pretty proud of my hard work when the room looked like this...

Unfortunately a mere couple of hours later it looked like this

so my happiness was obviously short lived.  As you can see from this photo, I kind of had to abandon the kitchen cabinet project in the middle which brings me to another valuable lesson learned.  After Chad and I finished the ceilings and glue scraping, it was time to work on all chipping up the tile in the kitchen.  Yet another really fun miserable demo project.  When we were done, there was still mortar stuck all over the floor.  To make a long story short, we rented a concrete grinder but it didn't really help all that much so we Chad had to go around the whole kitchen with this little tool called a drimmel (I'm sure I'm not spelling that right at all) and chip it all up.  I tried to help by sucking as much dust out of the air as I could with the shop vac but it was still a huge mess.  And while using this tool the bottom of the cabinets got all beat up and have to be repainted and everything is filthy and has to be cleaned again.  Which brings me to the lesson...PAINT AFTER DEMO.

Anyway, thats enough about prepping the subfloor.  I'm sure you get that it is a long and dirty project.  Onto the somewhat fun part.  Jerry came over to help Todd and Chad figure out how to lay out the floors so that everything would be square with the walls.  There were all sorts of measurements and tools involved and eventually they had a starting point.

So, they started laying down the floors in the master bedroom.  It is definitely not hard skill-wise, but it is extremely time-consuming.  You have to spread the glue on the floor in little strips

and then you have to make cuts around all the walls using this thing...I'm still not sure what it's actual name is but they let me use it and it was really fun!

My other job was to go after them and wipe up any excess glue...not so fun.  Anyway, at the end of 2 days we had this...

and now I just can't wait to do the rest of the house.  Hopefully this weekend we will finish the floors in the kitchen and get some appliances in early next week!

In a couple of other un-floor related updates...

This is the trash pile we have going on in front of the house right now.  I'm slightly concerned that the neighbors are going to hate us before we even meet them.

THIS giant hole in the wall is the beginning of our new master walk-in closet...apparently the walls are going to be built tomorrow so I will post more pics when I get them!