Stone by Stone...

As with any new homeowner, you take pride into putting ALL the manual labor into the house. All the blood, the sweat, and even, the tears... all go into making the house into home. As I have pointed out in an earlier post, Brick by Brick, Tom is very excited into doing A LOT of the work that we wanted to put into the house. Let's just say that it was A LOT of work. But, in the long run, we saved money on doing the work ourselves and grew stronger with every beat of that nail gun. 

The very first thing that we wanted to do, aside from painting all the walls from the sterile white to every possible shade of color, which you can read here, was change the floors in the bedrooms. I don't know if you recall exactly how the bedrooms looked like before, but, with the new floors installed, they look much better. 

The following is a picture journey of the world that we lived in and had to listen to for a couple of weeks... 

A few things to note about this journey: we wanted real, hardwood floors... no laminate for us. Granted, many laminates out there can look like real hardwood now. But, I think that the texture and feel of hardwood versus laminate can be noticed. And, we wanted dark colored floors...  no cherry or maple... dark wood. And, putting this two together, we got the floor that we wanted from Lumber Liquidators. It is through their Casa de Colour series. We settled on getting the Walnut Hickory color, since this series comes pre-finished. And, if we want to change the stain in a few years, we have the option to, just by buffing the floor and re-staining with the new stain. Below is a picture of how our floors would look like...

From Lumber Liquidators Casa de Colour Hardwood Floors in Walnut Hickory

The reality... 

A lot of work went into cutting through the old carpet and ripping off the laminate flooring in the hallway. The hallway ended up being done as well since it connects all the bedrooms and we were going for- perfection. Okay... maybe, not perfection, but definitely, we were going for uniformity throughout one side of the house. The floors in both the living room and dining room will have to wait. A few more years.

Tom basically transformed into Tim Taylor, Tim Allen's character from Home Improvement. He was armed and ready to go to battle, ermm, to nail down floor boards. With his handy dandy rubber mallet and nail gun, he was able to finish one whole room by himself. Granted, it took him two weekends to finish the room in between work and relaxation. And, there was still the hallway and the two other rooms to finish as well. All before family and friends are all wanting to come visit and stay... But, for one person to do, it is A LOT of work. And, as for me, during this whole process, I was in the other side of the house- cooking, cleaning, washing laundry... 

After the carpet had been ripped off. Subfloor can be seen along the piles of hardwood planks that still needs to be nailed down. See all the new tools that Tom got just for this house project... 

Surveying the room... 

Mr. Bijou supervising and trying to look cute. He was not happy being IGNORED  the entire time. 

First planks in place!

Bijou surveying the scene to see if we did it correctly...

He doesn't look too happy with the outcome.

DO OVER!

Some more checking out... Who knew how much work it would take just to put down the first few rows?

Almost there!

Finally, I can stand- Tom says.

One room done. On to the hallway...

Bijou watching to make sure his mama did it right...

The battle is not over... the hallway and the other bedrooms still need to be done. It's getting there... Isn't it funny how our little furball keeps photo bombing the scene of the crime project? He just wants to get his two cents in.

To be continued...