to' up from the flo' up

it started friday night with the ripping o' the carpet.
first we moved all of our living room furniture to various rooms of our house.
the couches and book shelves went right smack dab in the middle of our kitchen.

the boys thought it was pretty exciting to have couches in the kitchen.
they said it was their pirate ship.
avery even made a flag for it.

our friend zach helped us rip out the carpet and pry up those little wood nail strip things (that's the technical term).
this was actually pretty fast and easy.

zach laid a big strip of the torn up carpet in the middle of the living room so we could pile all of the wood strips on it.
then we rolled that up and piled it in the garage with the rest of the carpet rolls.
next, we swept up all the dirt & dust we could.
it was evident that the builders were in a big, fat hurry when they built our house.
we bought it in 2005 (4 days before fin was born) at the height of the real estate boom and we were at their mercy.
we found razor blades, random bent nails, etc.  i'm surprised we didn't find someone's diet pepsi can laying under there.
speaking or razor blades, we used this bad boy to scrape up any bits of dry wall, paint, etc. to make the floor smooth & even.

before we called it a night, i mopped the floor so that we could start with a clean(ish) slate in the  morning.

i had to leave a little message for my hottie. (blurred out some so you don't start stalking me).

the boys were beyond excited in the morning. we let them bring their scooter and plasma car in to ride around on the slab before we got started.

for the morning I mostly ran around with the boys getting extra tools and keeping us out of the way.
zach came back to help and our friend dave joined us as well.  they were such a huge help!
from the afternoon on, i was able to work with aj & dave.  
our boys were such troopers during this process.  they played outside, played in their room, played computer and watched too much t.v.
it was a long day, but i think dave said it best when he said, "mama said there'd be days like these." :)

the hardest part was cutting around all the door ways.
you really have to plan out how you're going to lay the planks.
you can't just start slapping them down willy nilly.
thankfully dave has remodeled a bunch of homes and is super knowledgeable about all things construction/handy.   he was invaluable.
he helped our non-handy minds grasp what we were supposed to do.
aj and i burned the midnight oil to get it all done.  but we made it and were in bed by 1:30 a.m.
it felt so good to wake up to the hard part being over.
sunday we moved all our furniture back and even got a little nap. 
now we just have to get the transition pieces put in and it will be complete!

i'll post the finished product sometime this week complete with before and afters. 
here's hoping for a sunny day to get some good shots.  :) Pin It