For the Love of Floors!

A week has come and gone and we now have fresh paint and new floors to show for it.

The pro's came in to take over our otherwise miserable job of cleaning the atrociously dirty walls and painting them. What they accomplished in two days would have taken us several weeks- along with ample sneezing, tennis elbow and crooked necks from peering up at the vaulted ceilings. We were thrilled to no end to see the home in a new, fresh light of light 'Swiss Coffee White' (a great bright shade for walls, and superb for trim).

After several evenings of work (though not many keeping in mind we own a townhome and don't want to make enemies with our neighbors so quickly), Nate has just about finished the entire upper floors of our new home. We chose IKEA's Dark Tundra flooring at $1.15/sq. ft... an unbelievably extraordinary price that gave us the value and modern looks combo. Reminiscent of an exotic zebra-wood, we kind of fell in love with it the minute we saw it.
While the first day was slow as Nate became accustomed to the work,
the second day picked up. A good deal of finesse is required, along with a rhythm that comes from laying floor board after floor board. Of the 25 Ikea Tundra boxes we purchased, 2 of them were probably a wash through human error alone. Nate did a meticulous job measuring and planning, nonetheless some boards were not quite salvagable for use after a few hacks with the table saw. We had assumed that it was safe to give an extra 10% to error, so this keeps up with our own experience thus far. The most tedious and time consuming areas are, not surprisingly, areas with doorways and other obstacles. In other words, our upstairs filled with four doorways, five closets and a staircase railing were as tough a job as we would expect. The downstairs would be a piece of cake after these angles!


Somewhere in the midst of the flooring mayhem (which took up about 8 hours of time on Friday and another 10 hours on Saturday), our shiny new Samsung refrigerator was delivered. Having hoped to avoid a new fridge purchase right away, our dreams were dashed by the most disgusting food-storing spot I've seen to date (as you may recall from my previous post). Luckily, the new bottom-mounted freezer is sleek, black, the highest Energy-Star rating possible and all around splendid. And for little more than $700, I think I pulled off a great score: Besides that, this is our first ever brand-spanking-new refrigerator, complete with the new fridge smell. Someone ought to make Smelly Trees of New Fridge Smell... can't get enough of it (though that's soon to change).

After some coffee time, some park time (me taking our exceptional kiddo out of the house so he might actually enjoy his weekend time) and a few store runs, the house was really coming along. In lieu of a stairnose piece for the upstairs floor leading down the steps, Nate chose to use a standard IKEA threshold kit that matches our Tundra flooring to serve as the top of the steps. Despite our best efforts, he appeared so enamored with his choice that we couldn't pull him away from prayer:


We'll have the molding up in the coming days, and we'll have to make a decision on the staircase carpeting (a saga in and of itself) in the coming week. For now, the walls are slick and like-new, the floors upstairs are va-va-voom and the place is really coming together. With the trim to come and the downstairs on tap for its own makeover in the Tundra wood, the place is really coming along...