Simply Beautiful By Angela

creating simple beauty on a budget

One Room Challenge (Week 2): A Good Start

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all having a great week. Last week I announced that I am once again crazy brave enough to participate in the One Room Challenge hosted by Calling It Home. This time around I’ve chosen to work on our living room which is definitely due for a nice refresh!  You can catch all of my big plans here.

The first step (and what started this whole makeover) was replacing our carpet with laminate plank flooring.  We decided to install them ourselves to save money and I’m going to be one hundred and twenty percent honest with you guys –it has NOT been easy!  The prep work (which ironically was what I was the most nervous about) was actually very simple.  Figuring out angles and cuts was not.

We’re currently about 99% done with the floors and just have a few baseboards and caulking to finish up.  I’m soooo relieved!  Would I go back and pay someone to do it if I could?  Probably not haha!  After all, the money that we saved is what’s allowing me to do everything else that I have planned in here.

I’ll share an in depth tutorial at a later date but for now I’ll show you a little bit of the process and a big hurdle that we had to get through! 

As a reminder this is how the room looked originally.

Don’t be fooled by this picture, the carpet was super disgusting and so was the area rug. 

The hubby had a couple of his super awesome friends come over to help. We began by ripping up the carpet and then removed the padding and the tack strips that were underneath (which are sharp–ouch!!)

The guys used scrapers to get as many of the staples and nails out as they could while I went around with pliers to pull the ones that they couldn’t get.

The landing wasn’t as easy.  The guys took turns using a sledgehammer to remove all of the tile.

 The floors that we chose already have underlayment attached but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra layer so we ended up purchasing some Pergo Gold underlayment.

Once the underlayment was down we were ready to start laying the floor!  Locking them together is really simple as long as you have a Floor Installation Kit to help you.

Most of the floor (except for the kitchen area) was done by the end of the weekend and I was feeling pretty exstatic!

But then on Monday I had a terrible realization.  My beautiful floors were in a perfect brick like pattern.  I can’t even remember what made me think of it, but all of the sudden I remembered reading that plank floors should be laid in a random staggered pattern.

Why didn’t I remember this during installation, you (and my hubby…) ask?  I guess I’ll chalk it up to one of those little things that “slipped my mind” while we were in the midst of completing a project that I’ve dreamed about for years.  Maybe my excitement about this project finally happening got the best of me??
I laugh about it now, but of course at the time it was so NOT funny.
So anyways, Monday evening I came home from work bound and determined to fix it myself since Anthony kept trying to convince me that it was fine the way it was.  Once this girl has an idea in her head, there is NO talking her out of it!
I will spare you the dramatic details and just tell you that it didn’t go too well.  I got about half of them up before I got stuck and admitted defeat.
Luckily I am married to the most AMAZING man in the world because on Tuesday he got off from work early, came home and got straight to work on the floors.  By the time I got home with the boys  he had most of it all fixed.  I was stunned.
Seriously, so lucky, right?!
This how it looked all finished up before the furniture made its way back inside.  I’m glad I listened to Anthony on doing the large flat baseboards, they look so good!
Oh and the board and batten is starting to go up as well!  I should have some pictures of it to share with you all next week.
Not too bad for the first week!  Although based off of my previous challenges it’s usually more towards the end that I start stressing about how much I have left to do!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will be back next week to share some (hopefully) great progress.  Oh and be sure to check out how the other guest particpants are doing on their first week here.
 
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Linking up to these awesome parties!


Comments

  2. Oh nooooo, that is terrible about the floors. I would have just left them like that. We just installed Vinyl planks and that installation kit was a life saver!

  3. Wowza, awesome job. It has transformed that room! Can hardly wait to see it with the furniture. Saw this on the Thrifty Thursday Link party. Seriously great job.

    • Thank you so much Cindy! We finally have almost all of the furniture back in and it feels and looks so good no. Starting to come together 🙂

  4. Beautiful job!! But how did you do the landing? I got a peek of it and it looks great. I have stairs that I would like to do that way.

    Suzanne

    • Thank you Suzanne! We bought special stair pieces call Cap-A-Tread from Home Depot. They aren't cheap but look beautiful 🙂

  5. So sorry about all the extra work but your floors do look beautiful. I am patiently waiting to finish installing laminate in my house as well. Thanks for sharing with us at #HomeMattersParty and I can't wait to see more of your room.