Floors

A lot of the main floor is getting new 4" Red Oak hardwood floors- we are doing sand and stain because I couldn't find a pre-finished one that I liked the color on... This way I get to pick :) The floor guy- Potts, will mix some stain and I get to say, lighter, darker etc... very exciting!


The areas getting hardwood--


If you remember, when the basement flooded, a company came and tried to dry out the tile that got wet. And it didn't dry out, so they ripped it out. We have been walking on that sub floor for a few months now... 


So the main floor hallways and area in front of the coat closet and basement door...


The kitchen- they are laying wood through the whole kitchen and putting cabinets on top- which is awesome! The counters will be a little higher and if anyone ever wants to change anything in the kitchen, there will be floors under the cabinets which will save a lot of headache. (We plan on living in this house for a LONG time and won't be doing the kitchen again... but nice still). 


The entry, living room (which will be more of a library someday), and dining room....


Here are some before pictures. The carpet in the family room (to the left) will stay. 

(This is a blurry picture from the house listing. I don't have any other before pictures of this hallway)

The tile goes throughout the whole kitchen.

 *After the flood*

We put a rug down over the sub floor to make it easier to walk (or sleep) on...

Dave took some of the carpet padding from the living room and patched the areas in the family room that had to be ripped out due to the flood...

The dining room- you can see where Dave took the padding from.

Ok, here we hit a snag. A STINKY one. 

The moved has stressed out the animals a lot. (flooding the basment anyone?) Zoe, our cat had also seemed to be stressed.... She had peed a few times in the living/dining room... Cat pee is BAD. TOXIC bad. Can't get the smell out NASTY. 

We had cleaned and cleaned and I was sick of the smell and so I told Dave we had to pull the carpet out. I couldn't stand the smell anymore and the carpet had to leave anyway, so why not. So one afternoon we pulled the carpet and carpet padding out. AND it STUNK.... and WE LEARNED... Animals from previous owners had peed A LOT in these room- along the back wall mainly, which was where Zoe was peeing. I read up on it (love google!) and discovered that if cats can smell cat pee, they think it is where they are supposed to pee.... so Zoe wasn't freaking out like we thought! She was doing what she thought she was supposed to! (Thankfully the carpet padding that Dave "recycled" and put in our family room was not an area that had ever been peed on... whew!)

Now came the hard part. We needed to get the sub floor and wall areas to not smell anymore. I was really concerned that on a nice hot and humid day after the new floors were put in, we would smell pee... and Zoe would smell pee... and we would never stop the cycle. 

So I goggled and read and read... and this is what we did. We bought a bunch of this:

And one night we brought out our black light (which we bought when Zoe had a urinary track infection years ago and I had to make sure we didn't miss a spot to clean!) and went around and sprayed EVERYTHING. SOAKED it... I did this two more times over the next two days. It smelled so much better! Then so make sure we bought some of this:

And Dave painted one thick coat over all the edges of the room, including where the baseboards were (we took those off ourselves too, can't be too safe!) and then a second coat over the bad areas once it dried. The black light revealed that we got it all and it smells totally normal in there!!!! Warning- the kilz stuff is crazy strong smelling. Dave wore eye protectors and a face mask while painting and then we opened all of the windows and had fans going. I was upstairs last night with the door open to our room and was getting a headache from the small second coat... STRONG stuff!!!! This morning it doesn't smell like the paint or anything else. I am so glad that we did this and did it right. So worth it. 

Taking the carpet strips off...

* side note, the wood guys brought flooring last Tuesday!!!!!!!!! except it turned out to be the wrong stuff :( I didn't even think to check when they dropped it off but Dave noticed as soon as he walked in. They brought 3 1/4"x 3/4" NOT 4"x 3/4"... They are coming today and tomorrow with the right stuff...

 

Taking the baseboards off

Crazy toxic kilz paint that I LOVE!!!

Ok, on to another area. The entry way. All of the tile in our house looks very "do it yourself". Nothing is super straight, level etc... The marble tile in the entry is fine, but I really don't like the pink and red veining in it and there are cracks all over it. 

Can you see the crack?

Then the tile in the kitchen and hall areas. The pictures are all above but they were also not put in by a professional and in bad condition. Cracks all over the place and check out this grout! Blah!

There you have the honest and true story of the before for our floors....