Yet again one of those projects that I had no intention of doing reared it’s ugly head from it’s deep, dark den at the prodding of my wife. We were at Menards (admit it, the jingle just went through your head) and they had area rugs on sale. Elle’s room is about 9.5 feet x 12 feet and we picked up a generic beige area rug that was like 7 x 9.5 or something like that for $28. From pulling back some of the carpet by the closet, we knew that under the carpet was some wood veneer type tiles laid down and they looked acceptable, especially with a large area rug covering most of the main area of the room. Worst case we would maybe throw down a coat or two of poly and spruce it up. (Insert obligatory Zar product plug here (Hi Dad!))
Here was the plan:
Step 1: With much violence, rip the nasty carpet out of Elle’s room.
Step 2: Remove nail strips.
Step 3: Unroll area rug
Step 4: Drink beer and pat self on back for job well done.
In actuality, here’s more or less what REALLY happened… (sad panda)
Step 1: Move furniture with the help of my wife away from one end of the room.
Step 2: Smash toe, smash shin, swear at wife, kick dog out of way, escort toddler out of room, escort toddler out of room again, fantasize about beer, give wife dirty look because I already know where this project is headed…
Step 3: Finally get access to a large enough area of carpet that I can start ripping it up. Realize that I had to remove trim between hallway and bedroom. Go downstairs, find power screwdriver (because the truly lazy will spend 24 minutes looking for a cordless screwdriver and another 7 minutes looking for a Phillips bit instead of using a manual screwdriver) and take trim piece up.
Step 4: Tear a large chunk of carpet up and notice some white paint on the tile. Think to oneself, “Oh, that’s not too bad” and proceed to rip more carpet up.
Step 5: Grumble at wife some more as we have to move more furniture out of the way. Get more carpet up and the stunning realization hits that some previous owner had painted the room knowing that they were going to put carpet in and didn’t bother with drop-cloths. I mean really, who the F does that?
Step 6: While fantasizing about liquor now instead of beer, try to figure out how to proceed now.
Step 7: Listen and watch wife start dying from allergies from the dust that is in the carpet and carpet pad. Start sending off text messages and making phone calls to see if anyone has any Benedryl around.
Step 8: Spend 38 more minutes moving furniture, rolling carpet, swearing, smashing toes and listening to the wife complain that she can’t breathe and her eyes itch.
Step 9: FINALLY get the carpet into who most blind people would consider a roll and swear like a drunken sailor as I drag it outside and throw it onto the lawn with the padding.
Step 10: Listen to the wife complain more about allergies and then again as she tells me to go back to Menards and get something to put onto the floor because we just can’t leave it like it is. I think the adjective that she stressed was “Cheap.” Seriously, we were just at Menards like an HOUR before this point. Bah, gas is cheap nowadays, like $2.65 a gallon, what’s another 20 mile trip between friends. I think when I started driving gas was $.68 cents per gallon. (Insert “Jeez Eric, you’re old” jokes here)
Step 11: Back in the vehicle and back to Menards. Spend 20 minutes looking for the cheapest solution that I can live with. Have a couple ideas and call the wife, but she never answers her cell phone. (I mean c’mon, why have a cell phone if you never answer it (Bill collectors, please pay no attention to that rant, it’s not that I don’t WANT to talk to you, I just have no money, oh yeah, and I don’t really want to talk to you))
Step 12: Make a decision to go with faux-wood vinyl floor tiles similar to what is in the room already. $94 later, back in the car and head home
Step 13: Get home to wife whos eyes are swollen to about halfway shut. I then try to explain her utter amazement that it’s not going to be anywhere near a quick project, because I have to take the baseboard trim off the walls, etc. because I didn’t want to half-ass it. Wife isn’t happy. I’m not happy.
Step 14: Lay a half dozen of the new tiles out on the kitchen floor so the wife can look at them for 2.3 seconds and say, “I don’t like them, we need to do something else”
Step 15: Stop working on that project and get the girls to bed. Go to bed myself.
Step 16: Wake up, take Elle’s crib COMPLETELY apart because it’s about a 1/2″ too wide to fit through our door. I wanted to get her crib into our room because I figured I’d be working in her room most of the day.
Step 17: After dropping Mara off at her mom’s house, stop at Menards (again) and return the $94 worth of fugly tiles and the $28 carpet. Spend 25 minutes trying to find the cheapest solution that I could actually live with and decide to get some dark brown Walnut laminate flooring. 7 boxes at $23 a box I think it was.
Step 18: Pack up, drive home, and haul the 7 boxes into Elle’s room. Proceed to move all of the furniture to one side of the room. Use the demo-bar to remove the trim, take the door off, ponder if it’s too early for a Jager-bomb…
Step 19: This is probably the fastest part of the saga. Laying laminate is really fast and easy. Once I started laying it, it probably didn’t take more than 90 minutes to lay 120 square feet of it, and that included all of the vacuuming up of sawdust and moving of furniture around to make room.
Step 20: Finish the floor, put the trim back up and FINALLY:
Step 21: Pat self on back for a job well done.
Anyway, enough of my babbling: On to the pictures!
The first group are of the drop-cloth, er, I mean floor before…



Here’s some in-process pictures…


And here’s some of the completed or almost completed pictures…



