As many of you know, we are doing some DIY home improvements to our house – installing laminate floors to be exact. On December 13, we finally completed the hallway and living room installation – a task that began some nine days earlier! We are taking a much-needed break now and then plan on completing our installation (which will also include our nursery, office and bedroom) after Christmas. You can see some before, during and after photos here. Please bear in mind that we haven’t put down the toe molding or threshold plates, and that our living room is most definitely a work in progress, but you can certainly get the gist from the pics. I can’t believe how much our laminate looks like real hardwood and how much carpet sucks!
The silver lining of the extremely tedious and time-consuming experience (besides, of course, how awesome our floors look) has been how giving, kind and charitable so many folks have been. My parents came down on December 13: my dad helped me rip up carpet and secure the sub-flooring, while my mom tended to Houston. Andy, our friend and Stephen’s boss, lent us a bunch of tools, including the much-used jigsaw and circular saw. Our neighbor, Milt, lent us his nail gun and sander. Our neighbor, Trey, gave us a hand on the evening of December 14 when Milt’s sander wouldn’t get up some glued-down carpet underlayment (his automotive grinder did the trick!) Trey’s wife, Heather, even made and delivered to us a home-cooked steak dinner that night. Our best Greensboro pals, Greg and Meredith, gave us an entire Saturday and Sunday of labor (not to mention a previous Saturday in November that they spent helping us plan the installation). Meredith also spent the night on Sunday and helped me all day on Monday, December 10. After taking our kids on a sunny stroll together, another neighbor, Jessica, sent her former subcontractor husband, Mark, down to see us on Wednesday, December 12; Mark critiqued our work thus far, saying it looked quite meticulous, and added that he would lend us a couple additional saws for round 2 of the installation. Not only have we been lent tools, equipment and manpower, but we have been given moral support and advice, without which we could not have come this far. We are quite blessed. Thanks to all!