redoing the living room

Friday when I got home for the day the house totally stunk. I swear that the cat and dog are having a turf marking war!!! The instant I walked in I was completely congested. An advertisement came on the tv about new flooring on sale at some store somewhere not any place close but I had to ask the hubby, how much could I spend to redo the living room floor. I have wanted wood laminate for some time. Well he told me all smart mouthed that if I could do it for under $500 to go for it. Well we have an 18 x 20 living room. I thought about it all night and really wanted rid of that carpet no matter what, I had just cleaned the carpets the past two weekends and was not looking forward to doing it again. So I got online and looked and looked. I found a place but it was going to be just over $600 plus an hour drive to get the items. I did manage to talk the DH into it. Everyone was congested and coughing by morning. The stink was horrible!!!! Well Saturday morning we load up and are ready to head off to another city. I convinced the DH to stop at a local store to see if maybe they had something that wasn't online. Sure enough they had some perfect cherrywood finished on sale for only $0.10 more then the other store, but by the time you add in gas it would have cost about the same. So 30 minutes later we are on our way home with $600 worth of flooring.

The worst task was pulling up the old carpet. The stains!!!!!!! Not sure how much might have already been there but the padding was in really bad shape, the house was built in 2001 and the padding was turning to dust. So we got that all pulled up and no stains on the flooring underneath and the wood looked sturdy so now on to laying the laminate.

Men are so pig-headed sometimes! The DH would not read the instructions. It was very clear that you start on the left side and work to the right. Well in his mind he started on the left side of the room which was really the far right side and was working backwards. Well rather than admit he was wrong he was hammering away at the boards to hook together. The boards are tongue and groove and just snap together in the blink of an eye. I finally got fed up sent him to the store for milk, we needed some and I needed to get him away before he cost us more money. He got home and seen I had it working. So I gave him the task of cutting the boards to fit around vents and door frames. This worked perfect by the time he cut a board and brought it in I had the next row finished and handed him the next board to measure and cut.

We ended up with leftover (a few boxes) of the boards and took them back to the store and got just over $100 back, so I did stay under the $500. Even better, the house does not stink, no one is congested!!! Plus it looks great and for some reason the room looks larger now. I did notice at the store that they have tile and stone laminate that I am trying to figure out a color and pricing to see what that would cost to do the bathrooms, laundry room, dining room and kitchen.