Hardwood and Hard Working Parents/Friends

So we had to do a few things to the house to make it "livable" mainly for my allergies.

One big demolition part was the wall between the dining room and kitchen. It really needed to come down to make the space more open and that is one of the first things we did! The Dad is great at this type of thing and so we did not have to hire a contractor we did not know. I put a picture of the before, middle and after of The Dad's awesome wall removal. He has done a kazillion other things in the new house but this was one of the first major projects!


Upon removing the carpet, we were excited to find that half of the house (the hall and bedrooms) had existing hardwood floors. Unfortunately we think that the electric stapler had just been invented when they put the carpets in back in the 60's because there was 400,000 staples that we had to pull out of the hardwood. By we, I mainly mean, The Mom!

She sat on her bottom for days pulling staples from the floor. I will never be able to express my thanks enough for just that but then she went on to hand stain and polyurethane the floors after The Dad sanded them! 
This picture of the nursery shows what a fantastic job she did! She and The Dad saved us a lot of money by re-finishing our floors while we were on vacation. (It had to be done while I was gone because of fumes)

The rest of the house (living room, kitchen/dining room, and den) needed flooring. We decided to go with bamboo because it is very durable, even more durable than most hardwoods, and it is a greener choice because bamboo replenishes much faster than trees. We were able to get a great deal at Lumber Liquidators and saved more money by installing it ourselves! (plus a few friends!) I have put together two before and after pictures of the living room and den. Also there is a collage of the work put into the floors and yes this pregnant woman definitely handled the power tools! Baby Girl will be very familiar with the sound of power tools by the time she arrives!

I did not get a picture of The Dad helping with the floors but he actually did quite a bit, including the last few rows in each room that had to be hand drilled because the air-nailer would not fit!

But now thanks to many friends and my fantastic family we have beautiful restored hardwoods and new bamboo floors in the house!

Until next time...