Becoming His 31: Handy Man

New Floors: Finished!

7:10 PM

So I definitely didn't follow through with my original plan of posting pictures through out the process of laying new floors down.

Not only did I not do regular updates during the project - I haven't posted ANYTHING in over a MONTH. *hangs head* Why am I finding blogging so difficult lately? Especially with all of the fun and exciting things happening this summer for our family....you'd think I'd be more on top of it.

I guess late is better than never though, so finally here are pictures of the finished project!

Sorry for the glare, but doesn't that floor look fantastic? I love they way it looks and feels. I love vacuuming up the dog hair and knowing that I got all of it! We purchased 3 rugs from Lowes that all match. Piper is happy to have the rug to lay on. She's not a big fan of laying on the hard wood unless its right after we come back from a run. : ) We also got a new coffee table! Mark's sister and her husband gave it to us for free and I love it. Its a beautiful table!

Here is just a quick picture of the floors in our dining room. I love the way it looks with our table and chairs... I just need to figure out if I want a rug in here or not.

Mark still has to lay all of the quarter round along the edges of floor to finish the project off - but other than that it is done! He got it all finished in a week and then a second weekend to finish the dining room. He did it almost all by himself - with the help of his dad 1 day and then I tried to help in the evenings after getting off work. I'm impressed with all that my man did that week - learning the new skill of putting in floors and then completing the project beautifully! Very thankful for his handy man abilities that save us money.

Hoping your May isn't speeding by too fast! I can't believe Memorial Day is this weekend! Hopefully I'll be a little more regular around here, maybe even post some baby bump pictures???

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Handy Man

New Floors: Phase I

7:09 PM

Phase I:

Step 1: Tear up tile in foyer/back door way and carpet in family room/hallway - COMPLETE
Step 2: Replace some of the subfloor particle board - this step is a new one thanks to finding some wet/swollen? particle board after pulling up the carpet. Projects are never as easy as you think they're going to be are they? Mark plans to finish this step tomorrow and start on step 3
Step 3: Lay the laminate flooring in the family room, hallway and foyer

I forgot to put up some before pictures, so here are a couple of shots of what our family room looked like 2 days ago...

Piper likes to photobomb my pictures... she apparently needed to go outside... :)

AND here's what it looks like now:

Again, Piper with the photobomb! See all of the "stains" in the sub floor? Which looks gross, but apparently its from having your carpet shampooed - which we've done twice - the water soaks through the carpet to the particle board and makes it all puffy and stained. Anyways - we have to replace parts of it like I mentioned earlier...

Our entrance way is all torn up too - the tile was difficult and time consuming to tear up. Or so Mark tells me, he didn't want me to help with any of that :)

Mark and Piper needed a little break before tearing up the last section of carpeting... By the way... Like our couch? We were blessed by it when we got married - a hand me down from Mark's parents. The plaid Christmas colors aren't exactly matching my home's color scheme though so we put a cover over it as seen in the "before" pictures : )

Piper is not a fan of the temporary flooring situation, she preferred hanging out on the couch, especially when her daddy was hanging out there with her...

I'm working all day tomorrow, until 7pm, so we are hopeful that replacing the subfloor won't take too long and that there might be a small start to our new floors down by the time I get home. Mark is going to be working on his own tomorrow so I will be praying for my man all day that he's able to get done what he wants to without getting frustrated!

Looking forward to posting updated pictures of the project as the week goes on!

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Handy Man

New Floors!

3:48 PM

A super big project is actually commencing at the house on Stockleybridge this week. We are putting in the new laminate wood flooring that I talked about in my last post. Getting new floors was always on our "eventually" list when we bought the house 2 1/2 years ago. Its not that we hated what we had (carpet in the living area, hallway and dining room, laminate in the kitchen and tile in the foyer and back door way) its just that I never LOVED the color of tile, the style of laminate in the kitchen or having carpet in the dining room. Not to mention after we got a puppy, the carpet started to gross me out in a way it never really had before. You know, puppies have accidents, and even with all of the scrubbing and carpet cleaning I never liked the thought of the "mess" having soaked in to the padding during those potty training days. Also - our dog sheds like she's putting on a new outfit every day. Even with daily vacuuming I never seem to get all of her hair up. So keeping those things in mind - knowing that we have a baby on the way that will be crawling all over said floors by next year - we decided to use our tax return money to put in new floors this year! I also won't be working much, if it all, after the baby is born, so we are using the extra money from my paychecks to get some things done before we lose that second income. We know major projects might come to a stall following baby as we adjust our budget to one income.

Anyways, enough rambling on about why we're getting new floors. I could go in to more details, but you get the gist...

Here's the wood flooring we picked out:

We've got about 52 boxes of these planks in our dining room right now. We purchased them last weekend because apparently when you put in laminate flooring you're supposed to let it sit in your house to acclimate to your homes temperature - to avoid expansion/shrinking problems after laying it down. I'm learning quite a bit during this process! My husband is a very thorough researcher before he begins a project and I welcome the sharing of all of the new information he learns.

Mark is hard at work tonight tearing up the tile in our foyer. He has taken the week off to put the floors in. Another detailed explanation: Mark has accrued so much paid time off at his job thanks to being a hard worker and rarely missing a day - that if he doesn't start taking time off he'll lose A LOT of those hours at the end of the year. Even with taking 2 weeks off after the baby is born, he still needed to take more time off to avoid losing hours. Thus - the week off to lay down floors. Isn't that such a blessing? (I only have just over a weeks worth of PTO at my job!) Now we'll be able to get the project done with less stress and not trying to cram it in into a weekend or after Mark gets off work.

Sorry for the blurry picture and my husbands boxers... the area was a bit dusty but I didn't mind the view while I snapped a few pictures ; ) I am so thankful for my handyman husband and all the projects he's done at our house on his own.

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Handy Man

New Fence

9:12 PM

Thanks to Piper's fast rate of growth and her new love for barking at our neighbors through the small picket fence to the right of our house... we decided it was time to put up a privacy fence.

We had a few people come out and give us estimates on doing the work, which ranged from $1,500 to $2,200! We couldn't bring ourselves to pay that money just to save some sweat and labor on ~~our~~ Mark's part. So Mark decided he could do without the big wigs and decided to recruit the help of my younger brother Noah to replace the picket fence. It took a little longer than they thought it would, plus a few extra trips to the hardware store than they originally planned, but it definitely saved us some cash! It's completely finished and now we don't have to worry about our neighbors conspiring against us because of our pup!

Mark and Noah installing the gate this morning.

I was at work on Friday when the majority of the fencing was put up, so I only got pictures of them finishing it up today.

I couldn't resist getting a close up shot of this gorgeous guy. Something about my man building and fixing things for his house and family that just makes my heart beat a little faster.