But for the record, nothing compares to being at home with this guy:
I love you, best friend! I'm so glad to be home.
This post is all about the wood floor we installed. We fell in love with the butterscotch bamboo at Floor and Decor, and bought 40 boxes of it—around 800 square feet. Thanks to Monette and Aaron’s Excursion (aka The Beast), we were able to get it all home in one trip!
Before laying down any bamboo, we had to staple builder paper to the flo0r.
Once again, Jeff offered his talents. He taught me how to do everything from measuring, cutting, and nailing. He let me borrow all the tools to do it. And he convinced me to install the floor at a 45 degree angle, which we’re very happy with. You can also see in the picture below the new countertops and sink we installed. It’s not granite, just a laminate look alike. But we are very happy with it.
Rachael even got into the action and used the nail gun!
Here are some finished pictures. Pretty dusty at this point, but sure looks good! 
Stay tuned for more pics!
After the ceiling texture and electrical stuff was taken care of, the next step was to rip out all the existing flooring. Note that the previous owners were smokers and clearly allowed dogs inside the house, so ripping the carpet up was a must. We also ripped up the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms and tore out some tile near the entry way. For this step I turned to my trusty draft horse, Aaron Dahle. I brought him over to the house one morning, took him off his leash, and set him to demolition mode. And boy did he demolish. Nothing was safe—he destroyed flooring, baseboards, tackstrips, and anything else in his path. What was left was bare wooden floorboards in the entire house.
See the floor boards here. They are white since Rachael and I painted the entire floor with oil-based kills one night. It was freezing outside so we didn’t open any windows. And boy were we high and lightheaded by the time we were done… Also depicted here is the stack of bamboo flooring that would later be installed on the main level of the house.
The next big project was painting. Again, being such a messy job, we didn’t get a lot of pictures. We should mention here that before we put in an offer on the house, the owner painted the entire house an ugly yellow. The color itself wasn’t that bad but we eventually started to hate it since the ENTIRE house was painted the same color. Sadly there are still traces of yellow in random places—on many of our outlets, on the metal racks for the sliding closet doors, and in some hard to reach crevices. Grrrrr…
Now some shout outs for all the help we had painting—Melayna put in numerous painting hours, helped us (a lot) decide on colors, and even let us steal some colors from her house! Mom was amazing with edging the corners where the wall meets the ceiling—it looks fantastic (see below). And Aaron was a champ with the ceiling. Ingrid Harris also helped out with some touch-ups. Hope I’m not forgetting anyone here!
I must note that the name of the color on this family room wall is La Fonda Boulder. And let me tell you, “La Fonda is the best thing that has happened to me.” You’ll see the other paint colors when we show some finished pictures of our house.
After the walls and ceiling were all painted, we moved onto tiling the bathrooms. A huge thanks to Jeff Harris here, for his expertise and fancy tools. This was a long, slow process, but it turned out great. Jeff convinced me to do a real thin grout line, which turned out really nice.
Alright, that’s it for now. But stay tuned everyone, I’ll show the wood floor next time!
Our first item of business was to get rid of our popcorn ceilings. This proved to be a very long and messy process. Since it was so incredibly messy, we don’t have too many pictures of this part. Also, most of the in-progress photos were taken with my phone, so the quality isn’t great.
This picture was taken after the popcorn had been scraped and a professional had retextured our ceiling. The next item of business was to change the kitchen lighting from track lighting to recessed can lights. Additionally, we added a light above the kitchen sink with its own switch. Special thanks to Mitchell for his help on this part!
These are the housings for the lights after we got them wired and installed. We ran into an issue though with the length of the bulbs. We selected a 5 inch housing, which, unbeknownst to us at the time of purchase, are used for commercial halogen lighting. If you try to use your standard floodlight bulbs in these they stick out a couple of inches, as shown in the picture below.
So, having already cut the holes and wired the light housings in, our choices were to put 5 halogen bulbs in our kitchen (which cost about $7 apiece, yet would have produced more than double the light power, and would have probably heated the entire house) or find a way to get a standard bulb to fit. I elected to put my creativity to the test. Using sheet metal, duct tape, and tiny screws, I concocted these little numbers, which extended the neck of the trim. Special thanks to my dad’s wood chisel, which was destroyed in the process of punching holes into the sheet metal. I owe you one, dad.
Check these puppies out—pure innovation. Also notice in this picture the lovely countertops that we later replaced. Erin appropriately named these the “purple dream”.
Fuzzy picture, but we got the recessed lights figured out at last! I’ll post a better picture later.
Okay, there is much more to talk about, but I’m realizing that all the progress pictures in one post would be rather overwhelming. More to come….
Street view.
Back of the house. Notice the deck!
View from our deck--nice open area!
The front room.
The master bedroom. Wait, this is the kitchen.
Dining area. Carpet!? Just wait till you see how it looks now...
Family room. Bay windows much?
The master bedroom. About twice as big as our bedroom in Provo!
The master bathroom. Again, carpet!? C'mon. Also notice the two sinks!
The main bathroom. See the fake stick-on slate panels? Very sexy...
Not every day that someone posts a floor plan so you can piece the pics together. You're welcome in advance.
Stay tuned for more pics!!!
Everyone is welcome to try doing the pushups... and its 100% free! Or if you want to try the 30 Day Shred, I have the DVD and would be willing to share the joy of Jillian Michaels :D
