Evolution of a kitchen floor

If you haven't noticed, I love to bake. A kitchen is a VERY big deal to me in the grand scheme of a house, and it gets me all giddy in my toes that mine is finally starting to come together.

It was the first room to get torn up, and dang near the last room to get finished!

Let me remind you what it looked like to begin with...

Then the old linoleum was pulled up to reveal some very heavily glued plywood subfloor....

Once all of that plywood was painstakingly pulled up(literally in 3" pieces), we found a mess of sticky tar/glue

We tried every kind of adhesive remover and chemical to remove it, because underneath that layer of yuck was hardwood floors.

It involved a lot of scraping and picking, and I had help from my wonderful friends!

Unfortunately, when that just wasn't moving along very well, gears were changed and a new subfloor was installed over that mess...

 

And Friday, Christmas Eve, a WONDERFUL man gave me the best Christmas present... he installed my new floor! (Sorry, Chris, it wasn't you)

One of my mom's clients (she's a hairstylist) installs flooring, and he offered to do mine for nearly 1/3 of what the company quoted me for the job. Dave arrived bright & early Friday morning, after picking up my flooring from the warehouse, and got to work

 First he sealed up all the seams from the subflooring, and then he took 200 measurements (better safe than sorry right?!) and rolled out my floor in my driveway to do some rough cutting...

 Then it was brought into the house and he began to unroll it and lay it out. This is when I REALLY started getting excited! I think I had texted Chris & my mom about 80 times by this point telling them how much better it looked already!

 I really love how well it goes with the hardwood floors that are in 2 of the 3 rooms that connect to the kitchen

It didn't take long at all for the whole floor to get put down, honestly maybe an hour or two!

Here's the bathroom (newly expanded, and not quite finished yet... that'll have a post of it's own soon!). The floor was carried into here, and it turned out so good!

Pretty great improvement, huh?! Now my fridge & stove can be moved into the kitchen instead of keeping the toilet company in the sitting room, ha!

The little things : My favorite floor

Let's take a little trip down memory lane. This is what the sitting room off the kitchen looked like when I was first handed the keys (well sorta, obvs there was no furniture once the house was mine, but the Cabbage Patch kid carpet was there in all of it's rusty orange glory!)

This is the first room you see when you come in the side door, which is basically the main entrance as it's by the garage and driveway. Clearly, the rusty orange/pale yellow theme wasn't going to be acceptable as my little house's first glimpse for all it's visitors!

A layer of carpeting and 2 layers of vinyl flooring were pulled up within that first week.We discovered these awesome hardwood floors underneath, and I fell in love with them! They are old and beat up and remind me of the flooring in Anthropologie stores!

When we had rented the sander to refinish the hardwoods upstairs my dad asked if I wanted to take it into this room, I said DON'T YOU DARE! Now if only I could stumble upon a wad of cash to make the rest of the room channel that Anthro vibe like these lovely store photos!

[I'm not exactly sure where I got these photos from, they've been in my 'inspiration' folder!]

PS Did you notice the toilet in the corner? Hate to break your heart, but no it's not staying there... it's just resting until it's bathroom is finished!

In Progress: Master bedroom

Along with the pink room, the master bedroom also got it's floors sanded & restained, along with a fresh coat of a paint. Chris is convinced the color is the same as it was before we painted- I, however, beg to differ!

Before (Original MLS listing photos):

A little 'in progress' action shot:

And now for the after:

View from the other side of the room

And looking through the door into the hallway (we have some trim to paint! hah...ugh!)

We've got to wait a few days for the floors to completely set-up, and then we can actually move furniture into the upstairs! It's finally starting to feel like a real house, not just a project.

(Inspired? - Paint: Sherwin Williams Hazel (SW6471), Stain: Minwax Gunstock, Polyurathane: Varathane Satin)

All grown up

You ready to see some progress around here?!

The second bedroom, more affectionately known around these parts as the pink room, has undergone quite a transition.

Here were the pictures from the original MLS listing of the house

For one, it's no longer pink!

After a newly textured ceiling, a few coats of paint and a newly sanded, stained & polyurathaned floors.

I present to you my pink second bedroom!

Of course it still is missing furniture, curtains and all that jazz, but hey.... baby steps!

My little pink room is all grown up!

(Inspired? - Paint: Sherwin Williams Curio Gray (SW0024), Stain: Minwax Gunstock, Polyurathane: Varathane Satin)

Autumn Glow

Once we realized there was just too much tar and glue residue on the kitchen hardwoods from years of tile and linoleum being laid down I had to decide on a new flooring option. Although I love hardwoods in a kitchen there was no way to restore the current ones, and since the sitting room off the kitchen has one color of hardwood and the rest of the downstairs has another I didn't want to add a third color to the mix (or worse have a failed attempt at trying to match the existing hardwoods!)

I initially fell in love with the idea of cork flooring. Have you seen it? It's a really neat look, and eco-friendly![photo via]

However, that woudl require tearing out subflooring or having a kitchen floor nearly an inch higher than other floors downstairs, so I turned to something a little thinner, linoleum.

I'll be the first to admit, it completely surprised me. I was a little sad when I realized that would be my best bet. All I could imagine was ugly 1990's patterns and cheap shiny plastic floors. However, linoleum floor has come a long way baby!


I decided to go with the Congoleum Air Step Evolution series in Autumn Glow. I love the multi-sized tiles, and the darker grout lines. The coloring picks up my coral/reds from the dining room and the gray/taupe from the living room beautifully!

Not to mention it looks REALLY good up against the hardwoods in the rest of the downstairs!

Of course this slightly derails the plans of a "Light Avocado" kitchen, as the paint swatch was slightly obnoxious against the sample I brought to the house. But that's ok... I have a better idea already in the works!My kitchen flooring should be arriving today, and installed early on this week! Eek! After that's down my appliances can be installed! That's the biggest thing that we're waiting on right now, then my house will be SOCLOSE to being live-able!