Monday, January 4, 2010

Floored- Part One

When we bought the house, 90% of it was covered in carpeting. The only exceptions were the foyer and kitchen which had tile and pergo flooring. The entire house also had an unappealing smell that I'm pretty no amount of febreeze or window-opening would have gotten rid of. So there was pretty much no question in our minds that the floors (especially the carpets) were going to be replaced.

Here are some "before" shots for an idea of what the floors used to look like:




While we weren't going to attempt to install the new flooring ourselves (with zero experience and 2 full time jobs), we wasted no time in ripping up all of the old flooring.

The first step was to pull up all of the old carpeting. This was definitely a lot easier said than done. The carpets came up in huge pieces that were incredibly heavy to roll up.



And of course under the carpet was old carpet padding which were just what anyone expects them to be- gross.



In addition to tearing up the carpet (and padding), we attacked the tiles in the foyer.
I was inspired to do this after watching a how-to video on you tube. Of course the professional on the clip made it look like there was nothing to it. This was NOT THE CASE. The tiles came up slooooowwwlly and in tiny pieces with DH chipping away at them for an entire day. Thankfully, after a lot of sweat (but no blood or tears), the tiles came up- little chip by little chip.



While DH was working on the tiles, I attacked the flooring in the kitchen. Luckily the flooring was a lock and click system so after some prying, the panels came up rather easily, revealing lovely old linoleum with some graffiti left by a former homeowner:


After two weekends of floor ripping, we were exhausted and not to mention a bit nervous that we had no idea what we were doing. But at that point it was too late- professionals were coming to install hardwood on the entire first and third floor and carpet everywhere else. I'll post the "after" pictures on the next post!

1 comment:

  1. I can relate to removing tile, its awfull! We re-moved ours in our dining room and kithen no fun for weeks and weeks

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