More House Projects...

Earlier I mentioned that the only thing left to do in the living room was to pull up the carpet and put the floating laminate wood floor in. Sounds easy because on the commercials people just line up the boards, click the board down, and it's done - like legos for grownups. And overall it was an easy project (especially for me since I didn't do any of the work). But somehow we managed to re-arrange the whole living room in the process of laying floor so the room looks a lot different in many ways.

After my parents and Rachel left, Paul's parents arrived. They stayed at the camp with us, but spent lots of time driving back and forth to Austin so they could visit Philip, Felicia, Lydia, and Corban. I think they really only came for the grandkids, but that's just my opinion. :) Paul and I went back and forth with them a few times, and Philip and the kids came out to the camp too, so it was fun because all of us got to hang out together. But I'm getting sidetracked from the house project...

For about a week during their stay, Steve (Paul’s dad) and Paul were found pulling up old carpet, laying the new floating laminate wood floor, switching out dishwashers and rearranging all the furniture (yes, some of the pictures that Rachel and my parents helped hang had to be re-hung on the opposite wall since all the living room furniture was swapped around). So here’s the week in pictures and the NEW final product.

Steve doing all the work...

Paul inspecting all the work Steve did...
Child Labor laws?!? What child labor laws? (Corban got to stay an extra day with us since he's not in school yet, and he was a good helper)
Okay, here's evidence that Paul worked, too. :) Note the air vent at the bottom of the picture. I was pretty impressed - they covered the air vents with the wood, and then came back after everything was clicked in and cut the hole for it. They measured from the walls to remember where the hole should be. And they got it right!
Vacuuming up all the dirt that was under the carpet...I don't even want to think about how much was under there...and we had steam cleaned the carpet twice!!
Admiring their handiwork...

Since we had the couch under the window during this process, Paul decided that he liked the open feeling when we walked in the door. So he convinced me to switch the furniture around a bit so we could keep the open feeling.
So the whole time that Evelyn and Steve were here, I never cooked...except in the camp kitchen for 300 people. But not in my home...because it was torn up. And those of you who know me well know that even if my kitchen wasn't torn up I probably wouldn't have cooked. But this way I had a great excuse for eating out instead of cooking!

(the dishwasher is on it's back in this picture) We actually got a new dishwasher that is much quieter and has many more options for loading dishes (the top rack will raise up higher so there's more room for big dishes on the bottom, plus other movable racks are available to hold all kinds of dishes). I hear that when they hooked up the new dishwasher there was a small incident in which water started spewing from under the sink but they had it all cleaned up before I got home from work that day.

Here's the new arrangement. The tv hutch/cabinet thing used to be next to the piano, but now the couch is there.

The next project will be our master bedroom – new paint and new floor (we had extra laminate wood flooring that will be enough to cover our bedroom). But we’re waiting for Philip to help with that. We don’t want to leave anyone out of the home improvement experience. He mentioned that he wants to put a floating floor in their house, so if he helps us, it will be good practice for him, and then we can go help him. (When I say “we”, I mean Paul – I’m not a floor kind of person…but I’ve gotten better at painting walls!)