New Flooring

We've finally gotten rid of the terrible, disgusting carpet that came with the house.  The people before us didn't care about it and, in fact, had a naughty dog that was apparently allowed to relieve itself wherever it wanted to.  When we moved in, it was hard to care about a carpet that was so stained already, so we didn't worry about eating on it or anything (though we didn't let our animals pee all over it, just saying).  The split between the carpet and linoleum was very awkwardly placed directly beneath the dining table too, so it was a huge relief to see that old carpet go.

We decided to go with a vinyl that looks like wood flooring but is way easier to maintain and incredibly durable.  It's textured, too, so it feels nice on bare feet  :)

Michael was kind enough to get this close-up for y'all when the little punk borrowed my camera:

We had no desire to do the work ourselves, so we hired professionals to take care of it for us.  Unfortunately, I had to deal with moving everything we own upstairs all by my lonesome  because the professionals didn't confirm their appointment with me til I called them the morning of to see what was up. By then, Jeff had already left for work.  In fact, when I called at 8am, they thought they were coming over at 9am.  I told them, no, they weren't coming over in an hour, but they could come around 10am so I could have some time to move all our stuff out of the way (and, actually, when the guy showed up at 10, I sent him away for another few hours because we have a lot of stuff).  You never realize how much useless junk you own until you have to carry it all up a flight of stairs.  My sisters actually came over to help with the last bit.  You guys are freaking awesome.

We moved everything into the master bedroom (my bed is under that mess... somewhere):

It was really weird having such an empty downstairs:

Michael was fascinated by the whole process and kept trying to get closer and closer to the action.  I had to tell him many, many times that he could stand on the big chair, the couch, or go upstairs.  (Bonus: you get to see the bottom of my pantry covering my counters):

And when he saw the tool that was being used to tear up the carpet (a long metal bar with a flat, curved end), he grabbed his "stick" (the back scratcher) so he could help!:

 

Luckily, I was able to convince Michael that he would be much more helpful if he stayed far away from Solomon, the carpet man.  Instead, Michael wielded his stick like a machete and "cut" up the carpet for Solomon.

The first day, only the one guy showed up to do the kitchen all on his own.  He was at our house til 8pm working and then I practically shoved him out the door.  It would have been a lot less awkward if he spoke better English.

The second day, we got 3 guys to tear up the rest of the carpet and we were confined to the stairway and upstairs while they spread glue and lay the rest of the floor.  We spent as little time as possible in the house.  Thankfully, the guys were really honest and didn't steal anything while we left them all alone (nothing we've noticed, anyway, so we're happy).

Two days, many hours, and a whole lot of mexican polka music later, we were blessed with this glorious sight:

We love it!

It also gave me a good opportunity to go through all our junk and figure out what we could live long and happy lives without and organize everything else.  These pictures are "progress," a day and a half after the floor is already done:

It's been a few weeks and I'm still not completely done going through everything (there's still a decent amount of crud in my room), but the downstairs looks amazing and I can sleep in my bed, so I'm happy.  :)