Day 1 and Already Remodeling

Once we found this house and we were pretty confident it would be ours;  Nick and I started throwing around ideas.  Ideas like "we could paint this room this color" or "We should add another bedroom in the basement" or "this bathroom has got to be redone."  Most of the ideas we started throwing around were pretty long term in the grand scheme of things, meaning we were not going to finish the unfinished basement or redo the bathroom before we moved in.  We even decided to wait on painting any rooms until we were settled and could really make an informed decision about what colors we wanted to paint.

There was one thing, however, that we wanted to accomplish before we started moving any of our stuff.  When we first looked at the house we discovered that in the living room and 3 bedrooms there was hardwood floor under the carpet.  Neither of us are big fans of carpet and would prefer the whole house was hard wood so this was definitely a bonus for us.  We decided it would be easiest to just tear out the carpet before we moved in.  So when we decided that the best weekend to move would be right after we closed, we knew we would have a long night of carpet removal ahead of us.  Luckily we had some reinforcements in town to help us out.  Our amazing friend Brandon just happened to be in town for a wedding on Saturday and we took advantage of that to get him to help with our carpet removal.  He was a huge help and made the process go by so much faster.

Before I show you the pictures of the transformation check out my original house post for a refresher on what the house looked like when we did our first walk through here.  Here are some pictures of the boys hard at work removing the carpet:

I promise I did help but someone had to stop and take pictures.  The actual carpet removal went really fast and we were shocked by what we found.  We thought for sure the floors under the carpet would be in bad shape and need sanded and refinished almost immediately.  Boy were we wrong!  Aside from the staple and nail holes from the carpet installation they were in amazing shape.  The longest most tedious process was definitely the staple removal and getting the tack strips up which pretty much took the rest of the night.

Don't get me wrong the boys did take a very important break.  They went on what they described as the manliest shopping trip to Home Depot, Best Buy and KFC.  (We later decided the only thing that would have made it manlier was if they had made a stop at Dick's Sporting Goods but there was no time for that).

What were they doing at Best Buy in the middle of a flooring project you ask.  Well buying this:

Not just that though.  That came with our brand new very large TV. Best Buy was running a sale that we just couldn't pass up. Seeing as how our previous TV came from my Grandmother's house and I am pretty sure was older than I was it was time for a new TV.  This necessitated a break because Best Buy only had 1 TV left so we had to make sure we didn't miss out.  Unfortunately the TV didn't fit in the car so it had to wait until Saturday to be brought home so you will have to wait for those pictures.

Once we were fed and ready to go again we got down to business and pulled up all the nails and staples and this was the result:

Living Room

Living room from other direction

Bedroom

I am still in shock as to how beautiful the floors were under the carpet.  We could not have gotten luckier.  The entry way in the 2nd picture is obviously not hardwood. It is a very ugly vinyl tile that runs from the doorway into the dining room and down the hall to the bedrooms.  This will eventually have to be replaced but again that is a project for another day.  

Stay tuned for some exciting moving pictures later this week.