But, I'm trying not to think about their room and instead think about our homeschool room/den where I'm sitting now. I am relieved and excited. We remodeled this room this week. It was the last room in our house that needed a lot of help.
As soon as we moved in back in December, we regretted not pulling up the carpet in the den. It was uncleanable and had a smell that just wouldn't come out. The only option was to pull all the carpet up and redo the room. But, we had to wait until our school year was done, because we feared it would disrupt our school year even more than it already had been. But, our year ended last Monday and simultaneously I started emptying the room of stuff!
Here's what we started with (pre-furniture moving in)
In my mind, this project seemed simple enough, but as it grew closer I realized how much we were taking on! It's far easier to redo a floor when all the furniture is out of the room than when it is in it!
Fear began to creep in. We weren't sure what to expect under the carpet. If it was only wood, we were concerned about having to lay a new subfloor and that the smell of cat urine (from the previous owner's pets) would be very difficult to get rid of. Thankfully, as we started pulling up the carpet, we discovered it was just tack strips, carpet pad and carpet that we had to deal with. There was commercial tile underneat. That made life much easier!
Tuesday morning dawned and I began pulling up carpet. By mid day, I'd pulled up all of the tack strips and 2/3 of the carpet with the help of my youngest brother in law. Wednesday morning I started laying the flooring. It was far easier than I expected! I was very thankful for this. Here's the flooring mid-stream (the tile floor underneath that was uncovered actually had quite a lot of fun character)...
I am very thankful for this room. When we moved, I lost a lot of my homeschooling space and it made me really evaluate what I needed and what I didn't. And like many things, I found myself in a "needing less than I thought I did" situation.
So, a few random thoughts...
The cost to remodel an entire room adds up surprisingly quickly! In this case, no underlayment was needed, so that saved us $200. The flooring though still adds up. The manufacturer's method of estimated materials would have had us purchase 11 boxes, but we used 12. My husband added the pendant lights and replaced the light by the door. We chose inexpensive or middle of the road lights for both. And then we needed furniture. We bought a new file cabinet, desk, shelf, table, and chairs. I always forget that IKEA furniture also adds up quickly. The file cabinet came from Office Depot and I'm so happy with it! It has rollers
If you're thinking about putting in laminate flooring... The adhesive strips are far easier to install than squares. They also come up since they stick to each other and not the floor. But, once they're down, they are NOT repositionable as the packaging suggests. So, be careful. Put pads and rollers on your furniture, so the floor will be less likely to get scratched.
This room was also complicated because we redid the lighting and had Home Depot install a new back door and storm door. That was an interesting experience. I wonder if most people are like me. I thought that when we had a door installed it would all be done and that there wouldn't be anything left for me to do. Not so. After the man left (and he did a good job), I had to prime and paint the doorstoop, prime paint all the inside and outside trim, caulk around the inside trim of the door and the wall, and fit a piece of wood to cover the gap between the door frame and the inside floor (a flooring trip piece also would have worked).
I told my husband and my mom that when I go into the room it feels like I've taken a bath. It's clean again! I was surprised that I've had such a strong reaction. I am very thankful and excited to do school in this room!
No comments:
Post a Comment