After many years of "wouldn't it be nice if?" we finally decided to pull the trigger on some new floors. We've also learned a grand lesson in hindsight - but the bottom line is you can't know what you don't know!
Here's the thing, in roughly 2012 when the house flooded (was it 2012?) the plan was to restore it to how it was prior to the flood. Prior to the flood we had laminate flooring. Now I could regale you with a whole hullabaloo about the flooring we ended up with - but I won't. If you want to hear that story, just ask Dylan and settle in for 20 minutes :-p. The end result: we learned laminate doesn't hold up to ANYTHING. We had 3 dogs at the time, who were only getting older - leaving us messes that swelled up the floor. Speaking of swelling up the floor, you couldn't so much as sneeze on that stuff without it rising, and since the idjit company we decided to restore with didn't level the damn concrete - the cracks that manifested after 30 years of settling made that damn laminate bounce!
If I never see another stupid laminate threshold again, well that's just fine by me.
It was our detest of the laminate's inability to handle anything that made us search for the most indestructible flooring we could find. Turns out, it's concrete. And, if we wanted to do anything else, we'd have to have the concrete leveled out anyway - so why not just pretty up the concrete?!
We found a local company who does exactly that and comes highly recommended. We actually found them years ago, it started the "wouldn't it be nice if?" dream sequence. When we got the bid it was totally affordable, so we pulled the trigger. Went down to the showroom and picked our designs. We picked July 30th as a start date for various reasons, and we had about a month to get ready. So when did we get ready? The weekend before, duh.
What we needed to to: move all the stuff off/out of the living area.
The first place I started was the office, and in the middle of my packing heavy things into boxes I realized a before photo would be good. The office .... it's like the house's junk drawer. It's kinda just become where things GO. I'm actually really excited to have it empty now, so that on the way back in we can rearrange, scrutinize and pare down. But that's Phase 2. For now - here's my hasty shoddy before photo:
And before I go on, let me address the toilet paper.
You see, as I was packing things -
I realized there were some fragile items that should be wrapped up. I swear a light bulb illuminated over my head just like a cartoon when I remembered I had $1 store TP in the linen closet leftover from a failed attempt to play a Halloween Game last year. (The game is to make the TP look like little ghosts and then roll a pumpkin into them like a bowling ball. We never played it.) I both hate and love when hoarding old useless crap comes in handy. -_-
We're not leveling the concrete under the carpet in the 2 bedrooms (yet, insert evil laugh here because I know Dylan doesn't want to deal with that but Emily really, really wants it done.)
So we resolved to make the Master Bedroom our studio apartment while the work gets done and the guest bedroom became storage.
Our AMAZING friends came to the rescue to help accomplish all of this.
*note here: we removed 1 night stand from the master & our storage chest to make room for it to become the studio apartment, we also took the love seat out of the guest room and inserted it into the master. You'll see that in a minute. This ain't all of it, it filled up quite a bit more, I didn't take a photo but I do have a video, but we're not there yet!
The biggest feat by far was moving the dang fridge into the garage. Have I mentioned my friends are amazing and also that I love them?
We had a quasi normal night on Saturday, more than half the moving had been done. We made our Bob's Burgers themed Blue Apron and I didn't take one dang photo. -_-
Then on Sunday - the garage filled up!
To make the Master Bedroom our studio apartment we did a few things:
- Borrowed a mini fridge because there's going to be parts of this process where we can't get out to the big fridge, also cat food, ice, all of it just makes life easier having it right there. (Dylan's parents saved us with that one! Thanks you guys!!!)
- Stashed the essentials - booze (duh) silverware, plates, cups, etc.
- Brought in the microwave
- Coffee!
- Sammy!
- No photos, but the main/large garbage can and the dish drainer do live in the bathroom. The dish drainer lives in the shower, but hey. It works. We also have a large water bowl for the kids in there!
- Also no photos (what's with me not taking any shots of the bathroom?) I cleared out the storage under the sink to house all of the pet food and treats + spare paper products and cleaning supplies.
Here's the set up with the love seat I mentioned earlier:
Our fridge & coffee!
The microwave didn't quite fit, but we solved that with books
Various items to live in here for a week or so:
The table/cat corner:
Now's probably as good a time as any to mention this. The whole reason our room works as the studio apartment in this situation is that exterior door! There will be parts of this process where we can't go mill about the living area, and the pets are already banned. That door is life! (I feel this warrants an LOL, so there you go!)
Cleared out a couple of bookshelves to make room for booze, mugs, cutlery, etc. We had an over sized mug that was perfect for housing the cutlery. We even have chopsticks, ramen spoons and kitchen scissors in there. (The books are under the love seat and we've got frozen ramen bowls in the little freezer!)
Here's video of Sammy moving into the room!
And another shot of everything pretty much set up
We had to put wax paper under the fish tank because stuff sticks that the dresser. We refinished it ourselves. We didn't do it right, okay?!
Also we tucked Baxter's crate next to the love seat just in case things get cray and we need to have him crate it for a bit.
Though so far, everyone's been pretty cool about living in the room with us.
Now here's the videos of me walking through the emptied house - mind you, they're only doing the floors so stuff could stay on the walls and how handy we had that file shelf in just the right place to house teh internets because my lanta. We'd die.
If future self is smart, she'll do another video like this of the new floors while the place is still empty. We'll see if she's smart.
Yesterday demo started, but I think I'll save those photos for some before and aftering in a future post. Dylan and I made microwave pot roast and some just-add-water potatoes for dinner, then settled in for the new season of Orange is the New Black. Took pup for a walk and enjoyed the storm that rolled around us.
Not a bad way to start the week, or this project!
