10 April, 2007

After the holiday

So what have we been up to since our trip away? Taking it easy perhaps? Nah, that's no fun!

I think I've mentioned before that I hate our light green lounge/hallway carpet. Funny really, since green is actually my favourite colour. Just not this green...

Anyway, I kind of made a snap decision to have it ripped up now and replaced with floating floors. We've been wanting to do it for a while, but I just got completely sick of it.

J's put in a heck of a lot of work in ripping up the carpet, ripping up the carpet underneath (icky swirly brown stuff) and then scraping off the black underlay that the original carpet layers so 'kindly' glued to the existing floorboards. The existing boards aren't good enough to polish up (plus there's been a wall knocked down in the past sometime and they replaced the boards where the previous wall was with a couple of really wide boards. Floating floors are just easier. Well, so long as you're good at doing puzzles!

J decided to lay the floorboards on the diagonal to make the room look larger and to disguise the fact that the lounge/hallway don't exactly match the two bedrooms we had done years ago. It really looks quite nice and it'll look great once he does the finishing touches (beading around the skirting boards, the metal strip between the doorways etc).

On the weekend, he and his dad were going to put up a wardrobe in our room. When we first moved in, there was a homemade job that was really poorly done and looked awful (we pulled it down). Of course this left us with even less storage space (this house has an absolute dearth of storage). Handily for us, J's parents renovated their place a year ago and had a spare built-in type wardrobe. Of course it was over a year ago now, so they couldn't find all the bits they needed. They've found them now however, so I should have a nice newish wardrobe in a week or two.

The other thing we've scored from J's parent's renos was their old stove. It's in excellent condition and to be honest, provided it was working in any way, shape or form, it would be better than our current stove. Our stove only has two working gas burners and using the oven is pure guesswork since most of the numbers have disappeared off the dial. The plumber has agreed to squeeze us in this week so we can get it installed. Very nice of him!

Then on a personal note this week, I won a customer focus award at work and someone mentioned today that there may be another award in the offing. All I can say is it's very nice of people to nominate me - I'm just doing my job!

12 comments:

Oh great One said...

I LOVE home improvement jobs! I call my local home center the happiest place on earth! We put in a Pergo floor years ago in our old house and it made an incredible difference! I'm glad you got rid of the icky green!

[] said...

Hey, congrats on the award! It's always nice to be recognized.

We also put in floating hardwood in our living room a few years ago and it's great - I love being able to just clean up with a broom.

Unknown said...

I love doing home improvement stuff too. My mom and I, for fun, will be like, lets go to Menards! and we get all excited!

I'm assuming floating floors is like Pergo?

Congrats on the award(s)!

I love free stuff from people.

Holly Muppet said...

Congratulations on your award! We have floating floors and have had them laquered in a full gloss and they really show the scratches. Next time we'll go for more of a matt finish!

My float said...

And doing it fantastically, by the sounds of it! Good for you.

Glad the renovations are coming along. It will be like having a new place! Lots of new things to play with!

Tasha said...

Sounds like you and J have been working hard! I still rent, but we have been looking for a house. I want a house because I want to do stuff like that!

Congrats on the award. Sounds like you are a hard worker too!

The Phosgene Kid said...

Congrats on the award!

I think the floating flooring is a good choice. I have seen it in homes and it looks lovely. The flooring is pretty resilient as well.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

Well done on your award!

meggie said...

Congrats on your award! It is always nice to be recognised. Good luck with your renos, lucky you!

velcro said...

congratulations on the award, it's always nice when work realise you are doing more than your job.

what is a floating floor? does it hover above the ground in a flying carpet sort of way?

Stomper Girl said...

I'm so impressed with your J doing all this himself. And with you too for your award. sounds like you're doing more than just your job, you are doing it very well indeed!

caramaena said...

Hey thanks everyone - you're all making me blush :)

I've never heard of Pergo but google tells me it's the same sort of thing that we've put in. And no, velcro it doesn't hover - though that would be handy since our original floorboards are pretty creaky (better with the floating floors but still a little creaky).

h&s, it didn't even occur to me that you could do them up in a full gloss. I'll bet it looks nice (excepting the scratches I suppose).

Oh and stomper I'm pretty impressed with J's mad flooring skillz too. hehe. It really is a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle when you do it on the diagonal. I'm sure it would have been much simpler to do it the other way. It does look lovely though. J took a photo today so I'll have to see how it turned out and perhaps post it.