Fore o Efter

Before and After

I won't post pictures of myself, or use my real name on this blog, but I will show you pictures of the inside of my home. I crack myself up, anyway.

This is my library. With a bare cement floor, after we ripped the carpeting out. The stuff piled up in front of the fireplace is what ended up on the floor when it was all done.
To the left is my kitchen; behind this picture is our main entrance, or rather the entrance we use the most, from the garage. The curtains are down from the sliding glass door because I painted the woodwork. They're not going back, hahahahaha! I hated them, so we ordered new ones last night.That's the entrance from the garage. See the blue painter's tape everywhere? I hate to paint. Two coats of Killz, a heavy-duty primer, and two coats of the color, an ivory-ish white.

And so it begins! The blue stuff is to protect the wood flooring from moisture damage; it is only 6 mm thick. Tennis shoes and work boots rip it very easily, we discovered that the hard way.
Door to the half bath, showing the underlayment, the wood, and the transition to the bathroom, which will eventually have a little thingamabob over it so the seam doesn't show.More of the underlayment. Eventually, we got smart and only put it down as we needed it, instead of laying it out ahead of time, since it tears so easily.
And we're done! We ended up with a box and a half of the laminate flooring left over, so there is one box to return.
The light you see on the floor is from the skylight, this picture was taken in the late afternoon. I'd like to not have drapes over that sliding glass door at all, but...one, this house is very poorly insulated, and the sliding glass doors hemorrhage heat in the winter-time, and two, DH is a nut about his privacy and does not want anyone to be able to look in.
I can't get over how great it looks. So beautiful!

Here's the stats for the project:
Laminate flooring.....about $360. We used 15 boxes, at $19.99 each, plus three rolls of the underlayment, which were about $25 each.
Tools that DH insisted he needed, including two sawhorses, spacers to make sure that there's enough room for expansion in the floor, and a crowbar-esque tool that you use to make sure the planks are firmly joined together.....roughly $100
Killz, foam brushes to apply it, and painter's tape...$20
We didn't need to buy paint because we painted most of this house before moving in, and I had some left over for the woodwork, so $0 for that.
Curtains, not here yet....$50
Felt protectors for the furniture (when it goes back into the room) so that our chairs and coffee table don't scratch the hell out of the new floor....$10
Time to lay the floor...10 hours, 3 people, numerous "Dammit(s)!" and other swears, two arms pinched in between boards as they were snapped into place (ow!) and one thumb bruised to hell.

New floor, no carpeting which bothers my allergies....priceless.