All I want is a hardwood floor...

2011 marks 16 years that we have been in our home. 16 years of 3 boys roughhousing, 16 years of beige carpet, 16 years of white vinyl kitchen floors. 16 years of pets, spills, more roughhousing and just plain wear and tear.

I began the year wishing for a hardwood floor. That's all I wanted. Rip out the carpet, tear up the old vinyl floor that never looks clean (unless I spent 6 hours on my hands and knees scrubbing).


I began pricing wood flooring. After a couple of bids, financially, I knew we had to consider doing the work ourselves. Finally, at Lumber Liquidators we found a great deal on beautiful Brazilian Cherry engineered flooring at only $2.17 per square foot, so we loaded up the truck with our purchase of 1100 square feet. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves in to.

Thus began the project. There was no way we were putting in a wood floor without first repainting the living room, dining room, and two story entry. This part of the project took us about a month.

Then, looking at our kitchen, I knew we had to paint or replace the old oak kitchen cabinets. My kitchen was always sadly lacking in cabinet space. The cabinets did not go all the way to the ceiling and the large bar took up a lot of space with very little usable cupboard space.


Rob's parents recently had their kitchen remodeled by Precision Woodworking of Lindon. So I worked with them to design our new kitchen.

Now everything was set in motion for the rest of the project.
(Sexiest man alive, pulling down the old cabinets!)


One of the hardest parts of the job was tearing out the vinyl floor. What a mess. We removed all of the baseboards, the carpet and about 12,000 staples from the sub floor. Then we had to rent a belt sander to level the sub floor. If you ever put in a wood floor, make sure you do that important step, or your hardwood floor will not work.

Then we began laying the hardwood floor. This part of the project took us about a month. During the project, we had so much help. We could not have completed it without help from many friends and family. Thanks to them all.


After the hardwood was finished in the kitchen area, Precision Woodworking installed our beautiful glazed white kitchen cabinets. Love, love, love them!

The entire project took another month to finish all of the details. I will chronicle other parts of the project in several later blog posts.

All I wanted was a hardwood floor...yeah, poor Rob, next time I have a small remodeling idea, I think he will run away and join the circus. He was so patient with me. Thank you Rob and to all who helped.

Here are some after photos of the kitchen remodel.







I'm linking to this: http://shabbynest.blogspot.com/2011/10/frugal-friday.html