italian walnut flooring

and so began the week of flooring. if you remember from my previous post, the bedroom project had 3 steps:

• step 1: clear out the room and remove doors, trim and outlet covers
• step 2: paint the walls
• step 3: install new flooring

with budget in mind, but also wanting to keep my sense of eclectic style, i decided on an italian walnut laminate that was available online and available for pickup at menards. so long cement floor!

and then dad, my superhero handyman, once again came to the rescue. he spent the week working and oh. emm. gee. am i giddy with the results (don't mind my wrinkled bedding). my only regret is not doing this sooner!

step to the edge

to be honest, i think this is the first ever post that i don't know the exact date of. i know it was sometime in september...or maybe august...who knows!

anyways, one day while i was out and about, dad came over and put the trim up on my step under the bar (which acts as a divider between my two levels). thank goodness! mom had been wanting him to do that for months. maybe even a year or more.

but now it's up. we didn't have many color options, so we decided on the metal finish -- which actually matches the stainless steel legs on my bar. and now the unfinished wood flooring is finally covered and protected from getting chipped.

unflooring the floor

so as you read in my previous post about the check valve, we finally figured out the problem with my plumbing! however, in order to do this we had to pull up my hardwood floors. and because they were installed tongue & groove, we had to remove entire strips of them (and hope not to break too many since we were having absolutely no luck finding matching hardwood -- originally i bought them from building materials outlet). such a hassle.

dad came up with the brilliant idea of labeling each plank as we took it out, so that it would be easier to put them all back in again.

we had to literally remove half of my floor. see all those rows with boards removed? yep, we had to take out those entire rows.

and then of course we had to put it all back in. we repainted with more killz odor hiding paint, wait for it to dry, then re-measure, re-snap the chalk lines, lay the mat, re-snap the chalk lines on the mat, lay the hardwood and secure it in. it took a few days.

thank goodness we labeled all the planks, made it go much much faster. my dad is a genius :)

sit down and relax

we went over first thing in the morning to work...and four hours later dad finally finished that last row of flooring. wow, what a pain! meanwhile, me and mom were painting the interiors and shelves of the kitchen cabinets.

i was so proud of myself for breaking down all the boxes the wooden planks came in and bundling them into a nice little stack. they sure are a lot lighter empty than filled with 325 square feet of wood!

finally...somewhere to sit down and rest. but not for long, back to work you two!

so then me and mom took off to go shopping for condo goodies. we went over to ikea to pick up materials for my island bar that will straddle the step between the living room and dining room. sidenote: the plan is that on the living room side the counter will be at normal table level, and on the dining room side it will be at bar height! anyways, i ended up choosing a simple black tabletop and extendable chrome legs (since the legs will be at different levels). it's a little more diy than i had intended, but it should be cool.

while me and mom were out shopping, dad and matthew finished the framework for the new squared-off closet areas. they also ripped out the last of the laminate floor (in the dining room and kitchen) and that's when matthew's allergies kicked in. cat stench. he started sneezing so constantly he actually had to leave and go outside.

all day long flooring

i love my mom and dad! they headed over to the condo this morning to put in the living room flooring while i was at work. by lunchtime, they had only gotten four rows in (it was taking much longer than expected). by early afternoon my brother showed up to help. that really sped up the process.

after work i biked over, and they had completed all but the last row (by the brick wall). it was hot (no AC) and they were exhausted, so we headed home pretty quick, ready to finish the last row tomorrow morning.

by the way, it's looking amazing! thank you family!