Oh, We Can Do That! Right.

When Trav and I bought this house, there were three things that I felt like needed to go. The first and absolute worst was the stucco on the front of the house. When the house was built in the 70's, I'm sure that the fan shapes pressed into the beige stucco were very hip... Needless to say, siding needed to happen. The second was the dark wood grained back splash in the kitchen. We ripped that right out and tiled it in white. The third must-go? The awfully ugly beige carpet on the main floor. The only problem was that it was new ugly carpet, and there are always so many things that need to be replaced and repaired, so we decided to put the carpet project off.

So, nine years later, and our library has grown from 3 bookcases to 41 bookcases, and there was no more putting off the flooring project, because I could no longer stand the carpet, or the squeaky floor underneath the carpet. We decided that pulling up the carpet and putting in snapping laminate flooring was something we could handle on our own, because that would mean we could do one section of the library at a time and not have to move all of the books and cases at the same time. "Sure," we thought, "this will be a breeze. One section at a time. Move part, put the floor in, move the junk back." Here is something I learned: it is really HARD to keep a lot of books alphabetized when you're moving them back and forth! I also learned that my teenagers don't have the same type of appreciation for "getting things done" that their mother does. Trav was an absolute trooper, working on it late into the night and getting up early in the morning to cut boards so I could work on it while he was at the office during the day.

It took us a good two weeks to get things done enough to feel like it was our house again, and the two little entryway stairs caused us more grief than the entire floor did, but it is done, and it doesn't squeak, and I love it! I'm ready for the next project!