Floored

My husband and I bought our house about two and a half years ago from a woman who was a professional chain-smoker, who had lived with her now deceased, also chain-smoking husband and their blind, elderly, incontinent Yorkie who peed on every 90 degree corner in the house, and also in the center of the floor, and on the walls. Anywhere he felt the urge, he peed.

So as you can imagine, the carpet was a little, well... nasty. We had it shampooed and we did our best, but it was still ugly, stained, and tan and on hot, humid days you could still come into the house and smell cigarette smoke. We were dying to tear up the carpets but we were waiting for the money to do it. Well, this year, the IRS was nice enough to direct deposit our floor money and we went out and bought ourselves 1,100 square feet of laminate flooring.

We picked up our new floor on Friday night and were so excited that we tore out the carpet the next morning. We worked round the clock, despite the cold I have and the raging fever and the aches and pains and the blood Luke shed in the process, we were determined. Two days down, we now have a beautiful new living room floor, the hallway is almost done, and the other rooms aren't far behind. Here are some lovely before and after shots. Notice the miserable Molly who thought we were moving and couldn't understand why the couch was no longer in the sunshine where she liked it.

It's a little dark, but this is the living room before:

And here it is after: (Feel free to Ooooh! and Aaaahh!)

And here's the dining room before:

And here's part of it after (we haven't gotten to the new floor yet, but the absence of nasty carpet still makes a difference):

Notice the sad, far-off look from the dramaic pup. She's happy now that the couch is back where she likes it, but this morning she insisted in laying on the dusty, nasty dining room floor.

Next weekend, my pup. We'll have the dining room floor done next weekend, if it kills us.

A big thank you to Amy at DIY Flooring for actually making it fun and not scary to buy a whole crapload of laminate flooring off the Internet from a company all the way across the country.