Laminate Floor Reveal

I got back from vacation around 1:00 am on Memorial Day.  I walk in, turn on the light, and lose my breath - omg.  We walked into the wrong house.

No! We didn't!  My house actually looks this good!

That's right... the post you've all been waiting for (or maybe just me!)....

Rewind a little.  Remember that time I gave you this precious teaser in this post almost a month ago?

Well, it actually looked that way for a while.

Rewind a little more.  One day, we made a trip to El Paso to go shopping at a mall. (Our mall has a Kmart and JCP as the only anchor stores, if that tells you anything.)  On a whim, I suggested we stop by Lumber Liquidators... and it just so happened to be a super sale weekend.  Which led to an impulse buy of 23 boxes of  Dream Home Cinnabar Oak.  While this actually wasn't my first choice, the price was right ($0.89/sq ft with underlayment attached), and the midtone color will be attractive to more buyers than my darker preference. 

Unfortunately, since it was an impulse buy, I didn't have time to read the reviews that attest to the locking system being CRAP.  Instead of several hours, it took us a few weeks to finish completely... we got burnt out pretty quick for various reasons (so many angles, chipping boards, doorjambs, etc).  I'll write a follow up post to this one soon with all the tips and tricks we learned, but let's get to the good part - before and afters!  As you look at these, look at all the angles we had to cut.

Before:

The laminate in the dining room ends in a weird place... in fact, the chandelier falls right on the threshold!  Note the angles of the bar leading into the hallway.

I pretty much hate how dark the carpet is - it made the whole house feel like a cave.  Note all the angles around the fireplace.

Note the FIVE doorways plus cabinets in the hallway.

Starting to tear up the baseboards.  

The old laminate was SO easy to tear up.  Took ten minutes.  The chair in this photo is directly beneath the chandelier, so you can see the laminate ended in a strange spot.

The carpet took FOREVER.  The glue was awful, but the tack strips were terrible too.  They were nailed into the concrete, took forever to pry up, and then clean up! All this prep took just as long as the installation.

Oh yeah, we found blood spatter under the carpet.  So that was fun.

We lived like this for a week.  It was awful.

But all that was so worth it.  

The small hallway took longer than the dining and living rooms.  SO glad to be done with that!

We are able to use our bigger dining table now - before, it would have been halfway on the carpet!  Obviously, we still have some wall art to rearrange.

I picked up the rug at Ross Dress for Less in El Paso... though undersized, it was only $30. Isn't it a beautiful room?  Complete with a hardworking man!

Man oh man... I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I do.  For only $400, our house feels like a million bucks - lighter and brighter.  Plus, even if we don't get it back in the purchase price of our home, I'm confident we'll get it back in a faster sale!  

Look out later this month for our in process photos, including some tricks we picked up that I wish we had known before we started.  Happy Monday!

posted by Emma