Come Together Right Now!

The house is coming together. It's amazing what happens when the flooring goes in. Here's a picture (they're worth a thousand words right?) timeline of our progress

Move in day

 

Painted over that TOO PINK paint

 

Tore out the first layer flooring in the kitchen

 

 

 

Then took out all the flooring

 

...and laid down the underlayment and started the wood 

 

AND NOW, YOU ASK?!?!

 

Flooring complete and the couch arrived!

 

 We're really diggin' the new island (and fridge)!

 

 Up next? Updating the flooring in the bathroom. It never ends right?

Island Time - Part 2

After building the island, it needed a little lipstick to make it pretty. So I followed the same steps we did for painting our bathroom cabinets in our last house

Deglossed

Primed

Painted (ended up being 3 coats)

 

I'll post pictures soon with our new flooring! I'm in love!

Island Time!

Unfortunately the title of this post isn't referring to a getaway vacation (I wish). I'm talking about building a kitchen island. Ever since moving into the house we knew this big 'ole kitchen was begging for an island. See the space below from when we moved in

 

 

Before being able to lay down the flooring, we knew we needed to get to work on the island. While a custom-made island would have been wonderful, it just didn't fit into the budget. After walking about Menard's and Home Depot's island/cabinet areas, we wandered into the free-standing cabinet island. Bingo! We found two sets of cabinets that we could pair together. It was the perfect width (at a minimum the spacing between cabinet and island counter tops should be 3') and beautifully in our price range. So we brought them home...

 

 

 

 

To secure them to the floor, Mike drilled 2x4 planks into the ground. We, then, set the island over top of them because the shelves create a natural gap at the bottom. See below, Mike drilling the island into the already secured 2x4's

 

 

Because we used a basic set of cabinets (which we secured together), we had to put some sort of back on the cabinets to give it a finished look. We chose wainscoting for the back, which we bought in planks similar to this. To secure the wainscoting, we used wood glue. Because the planks fit together with a tongue-and-groove system, we put glue in the grooves to make it more secure.

 

 

Note: We taped the boards together and let the glue bond for 24 hours. After this, we used the same glue to secure the wainscoting (now) board to the cabinets. Mike went a little crazy with the glue the next day...

 

 

 



 

Again, we let the glue bond for 24 hours and taped it for extra security.

 

 

 

To add the finishing touches, we bought base and corner material. Mike used the miter saw to cut the pieces to the correct lengths and angles

 

 

 

Next up - more painting! (P.S. You may be wondering about the counter top. It's actually an old door that was doubling as a workbench tabletop in our basement. It was left behind by the old owners, so we're putting it to good use until we can afford new counter tops. I'm still brainstorming finishing ideas in the meantime!)

Flooring Update - Part 4

The epic saga of the flooring continues. After tearing out the floor and putting down the underlayment, it's now time to actually start the floor! First we opened up multiple boxes of wood (always make sure to mix!) and created different piles with the various lengths we had (this is suppose to help us stagger the boards and lessen the cutting needed).

 

The next thing is to start laying the planks at the longest point on the wall. Make sure to use spacers!

 

You can see that we bough engineered hardwood. What this essentially means is we get the beauty of hardwood flooring with the tongue-and-groove installation of laminate.

 

After laying down the first row of wood to get a basis, we started to use a glue to secure the pieces together. We ran the glue along the edges that connect to the next piece, getting it within the grooves of the wood.

 

Then Mike would snap it into place and use the mallet to (gently) hammer it into place.

 

 

To make sure it would dry tightly together, Mike went the extra mile and used left over painters tape that we had at the seams of the boards.

Three rows down, a million to go!

Flooring Update - Part 3

This may be the longest running project Mike and I have had to date. Because of our busy schedules, soaking up the end of summer and the tedious nature of the project - the flooring is still going. Oh, and did I mention this sent us the wrong flooring and took forever to get us new flooring. I say "new" because the original floor we ordered was discontinued and that's why the sent us the wrong flooring in the first place. The only benefit of all the hoopla is that we ended up being able to upgrade our flooring choice for the same price.

Anyways, after tearing out the flooring here and here, we began to lay down the underlayment. This has multiple purposes such as creating a smooth surface, sound reduction and being a moisture barrier. We bought the square footage we needed from a supplier we found online. It came in large rolls that we cut to fit our space. See below how the rolls of underlayment come together on the floor:

 

It was a short, quick process to secure one strip of underlayment to the other. (Note: The red tape on the floor in the picture above is where there was no other way to secure it to the others. This is because we had to run the roll perpendicular to all the other pieces running horizontal across the floor). Here is a picture of two rolls of underlayment we needed to secure together.

 

 

#1: Pull the two pieces together so the ends are flush.

 

#2: Peal off the white strip which reveals a layer of tape essentially. This will stick to the plastic layer other roll of underlayment.

 

 

#3: Pull over the plastic layer attached to the other roll over the tape. (Note: Each roll of underlayment had one edge with the tape and the other side with the plastic layer. This makes it so that each piece of underlayment can connect to the next - like a puzzle!)

 

 

Make sure to pull it tight and smooth the plastic layer over the tape. It's that simple! You just keep going along the entire edge of each underlayment piece.

 

Of course, we got to parts of the flooring where we needed to cut the underlayment for vents and corners. Here's a brief tutorial of how we Mike did this. Below is a picture of where we needed to cut for a vent:

 

Next, Mike pulled down the underlayment, creating a crease, showing where he needed to cut the piece. Then he took a pocket knife, running it along that crease. (I'm sorry if this seems easy-peasy but I'm just always so amazing at how Mike always knows exactly what do to. So this part of the post is for people like me that are perpetually stumped.)

 

 

 

After cutting, it was a simple tear off of the underlayment and job was done!
 



 

 

 

 

Up next - laying down the flooring! Until then, here's our house...