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Let’s skip the good and the bad for now… the ugly is always what we seem to encounter first.
We are subjecting ourselves to a giant mess while our kitchen gets the makeover it deserves.
We can’t really cook anything in here for a while, so we got a little creative with the canned foods. They are being used to weigh down the underlayment.
We are making headway with the flooring installation, but not before moving around some heavy machinery. The fridge was fairly easy and I continued caulking around the perimeter to help with any potential moisture problems.
The oven, however, is just plain grody. We did our best to sweep and thoroughly clean the area when we swapped out the old stove, but removing the linoleum from underneath the appliance requires that I (ahem) actually touch the floor here.
Brace yourself for the worst pic I have ever shared on this blog… seriously. Remember the fingernail story? That was back before my first blog post, but I’ve decided to document even the worst of the nasty for all to see. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t scare me a little bit to share it, but if all I showed you were pretty pictures, I would only be telling you about ten percent of the whole story!
Clearly, the woman who lived in my house had some serious issues with using anything that contained bleach (or ammonia, or even vinegar…). BLECH. You’d better believe the removal of the stained linoleum (and then a thorough scrubbing… again… and a coat of Kilz) is allowing me to sleep a heck of a lot better.
The linoleum removal means we’re one step closer to a kitchen worth cooking in. Good thing too, because we’ve got some unwanted souvenirs around our midsections from our vacation and being forced to eat takeout isn’t exactly helping.
The dusty mess is forcing us to keep the doors open, but now that it’s October, the weather has cooled down a little and allowed us to go without A/C for a little while. The only one not enjoying the goings-on in the kitchen was Colby, who was only permitted to supervise our progress from the safety of the patio.
After six hours of diligent work, the kitchen isn’t complete, but we’re getting there. Barring any serious issues with the fridge or gas connection, we anticipate completing the kitchen floor in the next week. Cue me, happy dance, and an overwhelming sense of relief.
Oh yeah, we’re not done yet. Darn.
Oh, boy, does this bring back memories. Not good ones, lol. Pulling out the lovely carpet that was installed in our kitchen totally grossed me out… there's no telling what was hiding in there! Ugh.
You'll get there, and you'll LOVE it when it's finished! :)
~Chelsea
What is this “done” of which you speak? I'm not familiar with the term.
Hang in there, it's looking good!
We're doing our floors right now…my husband just finished the kitchen. I wasn't home so I was able to come home to a finished kitchen! It was amazing! You're doing laminate right? I was curious…we are putting the moisture barrier down (the black plastic) but not the green paper I see in your photos. Was this recommended? Or is that your padding?
The green is the underlayment padding. Some types of flooring have padding already under the pieces of laminate themselves, but ours didn't. We were told that the padding was also a moisture barrier, but after some research we decided to put separate sheeting down. According to a few experts, the combination mateial doesn't protect well enough on it's own when it comes to concrete subfloors. Better safe than sorry!
Got it. Ours had the padding under the pieces of laminate already. I love it so far…can't wait for it to be done! We do have 2 dogs thought and I can already tell that we will be dusting/sweeping the floors quite often…
I can totally relate. The living room and dining rooms have collected quite a bit of Colby's hair so we have to clean a lot.
But, it means that all of that dog hair existed prior to that too, only we couldn't see it in our carpet. I'm much happier to be able to see the dirt and get it out of there!
That new flooring looks great! Our previous home owner was extremely dirty so we've been dealing with similar dirty surprises. Colby looks very similar to our dog Sophie BTW. Can't wait to see the finished product!