I added some cute pumpkin lights to my front window! Okay, so they're not very visible in this picture but it's absolutely adorable in person. Tonight has been officially declared Trick-or-Treating night by Jefferson Parish in light of some severe storms expected tomorrow night. So now I get to rush home and pull out my bag of candy!
Happy Halloween!
So, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, the mysterious floor decision! As you saw in my last post, I had narrowed my flooring options to three boards! My choices were a light Lakeshore Pecan, reddish Alameda Hickory, and medium brown Saratoga Hickory. Initially I'd fallen in love with the Alameda Hickory. However, I've always wanted dark floors so the Saratoga Hickory appealed to me. But then that Lakeshore Pecan captivated my heart. I'd decided I was 70% for the Alameda Hickory but the 30% in Lakeshore Pecan made me hesitate with my decision. I got some great advice to "follow my gut" which eventually landed me with...
The Lakeshore Pecan!
Tadaa!
That 30% nagged at my gut and really does look good with my furniture. And I think it's befitting to select this board given that New Orleans is on the Lakeshore and we used to have a Pecan tree at our old house. It was meant to be and I am very happy with it!
Once decided upon and purchased, the boards sat in the house for a week before we were able to start with the installation. This was my first time participating in laying laminate boards; I'd missed out on my parents laying their floors. Fortunately they already had the experience, otherwise I would have been putting boards down haphazardly! Apparently a whole lot more thought goes into laying floors than just putting it down and cutting.
First you prep the door frames to make sure the boards and underlayment can fit flush against the wall.
Dad prepping the door frames
Then you roll out the underlayment! I had a bit of a time deciding on the underlayment. Everything I've read says you should not put a vapor barrier on a raised house subfloor. However, the floor instructions and the Home Depot associate said to use a vapor barrier. After speaking with my cousin, a former Home Depot flooring specialist, he confirmed that I should not use a vapor barrier and that the regular 2-in-1 underlayment would be fine. Good for me!
Two underlayment rows down!
After getting the underlayment down (which gets tricky around the closet!), Dad started with the floors! So, apparently you're supposed to have two cut boards on a row, and the smallest a piece can be is 16" long because of stability issues. I let Mom and Dad figure all the numbers out; I just told him how I wanted the boards staggered! Also, I'm terrible at connecting the boards. I struggled with that. Lesson of the day: don't let me help you install click-n-lock flooring!
The first two rows!
I don't have any more "in progress" photos. We put in about 4 more rows until calling it quits before having to do cuts around the closet. Also, there was a tropical storm raging outside! Okay, it was more like the remnants of Hurricane Patricia, but that was a hefty system that came through and my first experience of rain and tropical weather at the house. (Before then it hadn't rained in the city in over a month. In fact, it was the week after I bought the house.) It was kinda scary. We had to pick up things at the back of the house as that's the direction the wind was coming from and was driving the rain. Fortunately, the street or property never flooded, unlike my parents's neighborhood which flooded a mere two hours after we got home. I'm so proud of my little house for standing up to that bad weather!
My folks went back to the house on Dad's next day off to finish the floors. Either they couldn't wait for me or thought I was that bad at laying the floors so they went ahead without me, lol! So, I get home after work and discover this beautiful vision!
Whoa! Almost done!
They'd managed to lay the other 2/3 of the room in one day without my help which reinforces my belief that I am bad voodoo with laying floors. But how exciting is this! It looks great. Dad only had a few pieces left to cut; he's such a pro at this. Here's the video of Dad laying in the last piece!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Finished!
The photos really don't do it justice; they're a lot lighter and less reddish in person. All that's left to do is put in the baseboards, which Mom has been cleaning up for me. Once those are back in, I'll be able to move furniture in! That's pretty exciting in itself. I've opted not to paint the walls just yet (paint's expensive!!!) but fortunately these colors (the room is two-toned, Baked Scone and Cup of Cocoa) will work with my bedding and furniture so it'll stay brown for a few more months. I am no stranger to painting walls with furniture still in the room!
Here's a picture of Sully modeling the board next to the living room floors. I'm interested in continuing the Lakeshore Pecan into the rest of the bedrooms and the kitchen so I had to be sure it would go with the already existing floors. I think they're enough of a contrast to the red oak floors that it'll work well.
Sully almost blends in!
Well, that's what we've been up to with the house. This weekend we'll finish up some outstanding and high-priority projects. Then maybe next weekend I can rent a Uhaul and have a moving party! Well, maybe just Sunday; on Saturday there's a big Bama game where we get to beat LSU ;)
This weekend the focus at the house was the bathroom! This room is definitely high priority as it's the only bathroom in the house! Mom and I specifically focused on finishing the closet and the bathtub surround.
I had previously primed the linen closet so on Saturday Mom painted it with the final white wall paint. On Sunday I finished painting the shelves and put them in! The original closet color was a greyish green, making it look dark and dirty. The white paint really makes it look so much brighter and cleaner! Mom said she already has something to put in it: the first-aid kit!
The bathtub. Holy mold-y. It was easily the grossest part of the house. I mean, I just don't understand how you can let the bathtub get that disgusting. I sprayed the tile and tub down with Simple Green® Lime Scale Remover. This stuff is amazing. I've used other products from this company and I highly recommend them. In this case, I left it sit for about 20 minutes before getting there with a stiff scrub-brush and scrubbing the heck out of the whole thing! My goodness the amount of nasty dirty residue that was running down the tiles. I could see before my eyes the grout changing colors. It was an amazing almost spiritual experience for this clean-freak! Now, because of the damage along the tub/tile border I opted to fit a peel and stick caulk strip along the border. This is just a short-medium term solution until I decide down the road to remodel the bathroom.
I also made a big decision! Seeing as how we pulled up the carpet in the bedroom, I have to replace it with something before I can move in the furniture. So after agonizing over three completely different colored laminate wood floor boards, and lots of advice to follow my gut (which preferred a hamburger over this decision), I finally said Yes to the Floor. Here's a sneak peak of the boards I was choosing from, in their almost natural environment. The furniture, espresso colored, and bedspread, blue and white, are coming with me, so I needed to make the best decision to work with what I already own. I'll reveal my decision after we've laid it down!
And finally, it's almost Halloween! To celebrate, I put up some decorations :)
So to save myself some time and effort (because I'm lazy!), I'm just going to combine 4! before & after projects into one post! ! ! Also, it gets us a bit more caught up on what's going on!
1. Outdoor Outlet - before having the electrical work done, one item needed to be completed to pass inspections. Since it was just an outlet, I opted to tackle this project myself. It only took me an hour! Lol!
2. Hall Closet - Also potentially my pantry and general everything closet, the hall closet was kinda drab and dirty looking. Whoever thought it was a good idea to paint a small closet a puke color was not thinking right! Now, a fresh coat of white paint transforms the space into a bright space in which I won't fear to store my food!
3. Bathroom Vanity - The victim of mediocre MDF and a leaky faucet, the vanity interior was in bad shape. The bottom piece was stained and the MDF bubbled. Fortunately a few coats of Kilz primer cleaned it right up!
4. Master Bedroom - While I don't have a good Before photo, I can tell you that the carpet was nasty. I'm not a fan of carpet, and this stuff was a case-in-point why I dislike it. And vacuuming. If you have carpet, you have to care for it. These people didn't and had a dog to boot. So, we decided that it was better to rip up the carpet rather than leave it down and attempt to steam clean it. I'm kinda really liking this plywood flooring look!
I hope you've enjoyed the photos! I'll try to take better pictures and notes on the many before & afters I have ahead :)
I've had water for quite some time. Apparently there's no issue turning that on after they collect your deposit money... But gas and electric need to have vacancy inspections when those utilities have been off for more than six months, which mine was, and that involves lots of coordination and professional work. So on Monday the gas company and electric company came out to officially turn on those utilities! I tested out my gas stove and I am soooooo excited to start cooking on it! Now I'm teasing my folks to not turn on the lights because I have to pay for it now :)
This is a great milestone for me because it means I can really move forward with getting the house ready for me to move in. I've got some spaces ready to be primed. The kitchen cabinets are almost done (more on that later!). The plumbing and electrical work is done (definitely another post for this!).
Of course, it seems every time I go to the house something else comes to light that should/needs to happen. For instance, the carpets. I hate carpet and these are disgusting (smells like dog!) but I was going to attempt to just shampoo them to keep my costs down. Well, we've come to the conclusion that the carpet really does need to go however replacing it is not in the budget! Guess I'll just have plywood floors with rugs for a while :)
I must say, it wasn't easy getting to this point. I've lived with my parents for four and a half years, six months of those I spent in England with TwinSis. (You can read about my travel adventures at Flew da' Coop!) Due to this extended travel, it took me a while to get back on my feet and to find a good job. Despite this, I was determined that I would own my own house by my 30th birthday in August!
After a few botched attempts at house hunting on my own, and seeing two houses that I liked, I got a tip from a pair of good friends who suggested I contact a mutual friend of ours, David Madaffari. I will admit that I procrastinated and didn't call him immediately. Fate would have it that one of my best friends was talking with him and mentioned my house hunting. Next thing next, I brought David on as my agent!
Between David's inside listings and my (and Mom's) Zillow searches, I was able to narrow down a few options to go view one weekend. We visited one of my previously visited houses, at which I'd fallen in love with the kitchen. Unfortunately, I didn't love the termites. We walked through three different houses and passed in front of another, all of which I crossed off the list for multiple reasons. Before giving up entirely from the futility of finding a house (after one day), I pulled out my last playing card. There was a house that came up on the listings very late the previous night. Could we maybe go see it? I already knew the area; I have friends that live right down the street; I'd probably passed the house hundreds of times and never noticed it.
