Living Room redo

We have lived in this house for 17 years now and have started upgrading and remodeling. After remodeling both bathrooms, now we are moving on to the rest of the house.

We started by painting the brick in the living room. That was a huge decision because once you paint it, there’s no unpainting it! But we loved LOVED it and it has spurned us on to really tackle stuff we’ve put up with or ignored for years.

Next on the list is new flooring. I would love to pull everything out all at once but we just don’t have the funds for that right now. (Remember we have two kids in college!) So we are starting with the living room. It was an add-on (before we bought the house) and when we first moved in we pulled out the sliding glass doors that were still in there and framed out the doorways. We pulled out the indoor/outdoor carpet and laid a strip of ceramic tile and put carpet in the rest. Now it’s time to pull that tile and carpet out and lay new flooring. I am so happy to be getting rid of the carpet!

We debated between “wood” porcelain  tile and luxury vinyl and decided to go with the vinyl. This great post helped me tremendously! Thank you to all of you who weighed in with your vote! We decided to go with the grey one. Eventually we will carry that through the whole house, minus the kitchen and dining room space. I’m really itching to do that area too but that calls for some serious jack which we just don’t have right now.

Step one: remove furniture!

Here’s what we started with. (Warning: many pictures ahead!)

Actually I was itching to get started so you can see that the bookcase in the background is already empty and one couch is already pulled out. Then I remembered that I needed “before” pictures!

Slowly emptying out this room. I didn’t think we’d have enough room to put all this stuff since college kids are home with all their stuff and the garage is already full of Bedder Covers stuff. But little by little we piled it up in the fireplace room. See?

Let me get a little closer…

It’s amazing how much this small room can hold when you pile it up! Good thing we have vaulted ceilings! Haha!

Man this is a big room! We just love it!

The desk didn’t make it. As three of us were moving it, it started falling apart! So my brother, his son, Jacob, and I took it apart and my dad will use the pieces for attic flooring in their new house. 

I got dad and his buddy Tom (who remodeled our bathrooms) to take down the old track lighting. I’m hoping to put in recessed lighting. We’ll see

This is NOT a sponsored post; it’s just what we ended up getting – luxury vinyl from Floor and Decor. My mother in law recently installed it in her new house and she loves it.

Step two: remove carpet and padding

Our buddy JP arrived from Orlando and we got right to work. He cut the carpet up and removed it as well as the pad. We were happy to see that they didn’t use a ton of glue so the floor was in pretty good shape.

Then he popped up the nail strips.

Step three: remove tile and brick

And used a jack hammer to pull up the tile. It popped right up!

He also pulled out the brick step. The guys had to figure out how to handle the transition.

Step four: create step

After some brainstorming and a trip to Lowe’s, they knew what they had to do. Use a 4X4 to create the base for a new, same-level step.  

It worked! Tomorrow the floor gets laid! Woot!!!!