There is no rest for the weary!! Along with working on my final edits for Soul of Asimina (which will be debuting it's beautiful cover in just a few short weeks!) I've also been doing research for a YA contemporary novel, working full time, and trying to find time to breath.
I've also been doing some fairly time intensive home repairs/updates. We've been waiting a while to replace the floor in our entry way, because the carpet was scary. Not only was that the dogs prime place to pee and poop toward the end (we always steam-cleaned it immediately afterward, but still, gah), but it was also the section that was soaked when our old water heater went kablooey and flooded the front hallway. You know it's going to be a long day when it's your first day back at work after 7 weeks of maternity leave and your foot sinks into water...on the carpet!
We started by ripping out the old carpet and exposing the wood flooring below.
My husband sweeping the floor. There was sooo much powder-fine dirt underneath the carpet pad (shudder). Now I see why people replace carpet every time they move.
I also discovered lovely carpet tack strips. Be extremely careful if you are removing these, because they are sharp.
Once all the carpet, tack strips, and staples were up, we were ready to lay down the floor. First, we put down some BlueHawk Underlayment. We didn't have to, but we wanted something between our new floor and the wood.
We bought 100 sq ft of Trafficmaster Allure flooring from Home Depot, and it is freaking awesome. It looks like wood, but is actually made of rubber. Waterproof, skidproof, and pretty dang resilient. It was slightly harder to put together than regular hard laminate floor, but still not bad.
We found the easiest thing was to link the pieces into long strips, then click the long strips together.
While we did that, Bug practiced hammering with her plastic hammer, golf tees, and a big block of styrofoam. Her grandma's task was keeping her away from our tools, not easy.
This was the annoying part. The wood molding actually goes all the way to the subfloor, so I had to use a special saw to make the bottom even with the rest of the molding. Then we had to cut the floor to fit into the small spaces, around the molding, etc.
But it's so worth it, because it's gorgeous!
My dad putting a final touch on a transition piece
