The Keene Family

I can't believe we are done with winter flooring project #4. I also can't believe that we did four flooring projects this fall/winter! We are done, for a long time. We (mostly Jim!) has now replaced the upstairs carpet and hall bathroom, downstairs mud room/office, and now play rooms. This project had us ripping out carpet and removing trim. We prepped the room ourselves to save on cost, and did this part the weekend before New Year's. I found new rugs that I loved at Costco for great prices. One was in store and one was online in the matched set. They are very soft but easy to vacuum, making everyone happy. Jim had to clarify this process: "We're ripping out the carpet. And putting in hardwoods. And then you're buying new rugs to go over the hardwoods." Yes! The rooms were ready for installation late, late on New Year's Day. On January 2, the hardwood guy and his assistant showed up and laid the entire floor. They are so fast! ...

Our new carpet was installed! We started planning for new carpet upstairs about a year ago. Well, really, when we bought our house and saw that the carpet was original. While surprisingly nice for 26+ years of use, it was ready for a replacement. This fall, I picked out carpet and scheduled installation for eight weeks later (not on purpose, that's just the wait!). When the day finally arrived, we were very excited. We spent the weekend prior moving all of our things from the upstairs to the downstairs. Fortunately our installation included moving furniture, so we didn't have to do that. We just took the drawers full of clothes and stacked them up downstairs. The kids were amazingly hard workers and did all of their own room prep. Now we have soft, thick carpet that is clean and feels awesome under bare feet. Hooray!

When we moved into our house, we made a list of things we wanted to change, as I'm sure most people do. The floors were on the list. We changed out the family room carpet as soon as possible, because it smelled like wet dog. But everything else has been on hold because our outside needed lots of attention. Now, with beautiful landscaping, a new fence, and a finished sport court, the weather turned and we are ready to work inside. Winter flooring project number two is complete! Jim worked so hard on this project and it turned out just beautifully. The mud room/laundry/office nook had vinyl flooring, which is great for that space, but it was dated and had a seam in one spot that never looked all the way clean. Poor Jim... this vinyl was glued down really well and took around 12 hours to tear out. Yuck. He made a template for the floor with rolls of craft paper and lots of tape, and then Jim's dad came over to help hold it still while he cut it out with a rotary cut...

Jim has been hard at work the last two weekends replacing the bathroom floor in our upstairs hall bathroom. Like any project, there were more steps than we'd planned but I am so happy with the results! He laid new floor, removed the random towel rack, and installed a new toilet. Next up: the laundry room overhaul...