DIY Obsession: Kitchen Floors

I know, I know. It seems like it's taking forever to finish this kitchen. But, it's almost there!!!

So, earlier last week we finished painting and took all of the plastic off. It looked amazing. Not that our kitchen before was terrible, but this definitely just brightens everything up. It looks great!

And then the hubby started on the floors. (We'd started half of the flooring in our house in December of 2009 and you can see that post here.)

We had the cheap linoleum in the kitchen area that was scuffed up and ripped in some areas. We definitely wanted to get rid of that. Also, we didn't like how the bar stool area had no room to back up. The carpet was in the way (as shown in the pic below). By the way, the hubby had no experience with putting hardwood floors in (before putting them in our house) and it looks great! He's done an awesome job. This just goes to show that you can do it! You can learn. Don't pay someone thousands of dollars when it's something manageable (although you may need to if you have a strict timetable and you can't finish it in a few days).

Can I just say how amazing our kitchen looks with this dark hardwood flooring up against the white kitchen?

I'll show some finished pics soon. Still working on a few minor details.

With a big project like this, it can lead to a little bit of stress. But like little Ava often shows me, don't forget to have a lot of fun!

Just to answer a few of the questions I had from the previous post:

1. The paint sprayer we used was the Graco Spray Station 2900USG Sprayer that we bought from Lowe's

2. We are buying the pulls and knobs from esbsupply on ebay

Hope this helps!

Nursery Room Reveal

We finally have our daughter's nursery almost finished (just waiting to put in baseboards and putting up a chandelier). Although, she just turned 2 so we'll soon be transitioning to a toddler room soon. We painted the walls a light pink and then had brown and cream accents throughout the room.

Here's the before:

And the after:

This was before my thrift store obsession. If I had to do it over again, I'd find a cute little crib and refinish it and I'd sew my daughters bed set.

I did: cross stitch the piece on the top shelf, was given the vintage Madame Alexander Doll (I know you're jealous), bought cheap fabric bins and tied ribbons around them (that I use to put her clothes, shoes, misc. items in), bought her curtains on clearance, found the bed set on ebay, made the bow holder out of an old frame, bought her book shelf from a thrift store, bought the rug on sale, made her hanging name on the wall, put in the hardwood flooring ourselves, and bought the frames on sale.

I love walking in this room, but most of all love seeing my beautiful, little girl in it.

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DIY Obsession: Hardwood Floors

Okay. So, I'm being featured today on an amazing blog.

My Uncommon Slice Of Suburbia.

I'm so stinkin excited. Just ask my hubby. I was so giddy when I found out.

I found her blog a few months ago while blog hopping. After seeing her post on her kitchen cabinets (one of my next projects), I was in love with her blog and couldn't stop checking out her jaw dropping transformations. Check out her French Guestroom here. And not only is she gorgeous, but she's as sweet as can be. I'm the first one being featured on her "feature friday" and can't wait to see who is next! Thank you Kristin!

So, I guess there's not a better time than now, then to post about our hardwood floor DIY project. I'd been waiting a while to post until we completely finished everything (still waiting to complete two more rooms and I wanted to get the baseboards up - - anyone know of where to buy baseboards for cheap?), but can't wait any longer.

We love the look of hardwood floors and did our research. We wanted to do it as cheap as possible but of course good quality floors. We found an amazing deal at Simple Floors. They had a deal the week after Thanksgiving where they'd give you 10% cashback. We'd probably never see anything like this again, so we couldn't pass it up!

Due to our limited expenses, we had to do it ourselves. We'd decided to do it during my husband's 2 week Christmas break. But between going to Vegas and SLC during the break for Christmas to visit family, we'd only be able to do the whole house on a weekend. HaHa! My sweet hubby said that he and his friends/family would be able to do it all one Saturday. I just smiled and nodded. Oh sweet hubby.

One Thursday and Friday night my hubby and I did the demolition. Can I tell you how much I can't stand tack boards? Our backs were dying the next day. Where was our cute little girl? Oh, probably being hypnotized by that screen in the family room and running around on the cement floor. Poor girl.

That Saturday was the big day. We definitely couldn't have done it without 3 amazing family members. They were awesome (and so were their wives for letting them spend all day . . . right before Christmas . . . all day . . . did I mention all day? installing the floors) I was actually a little bummed that I had to work, but someone's gotta save lives I guess. I really wanted to help. They were able to get our family room, foyer, and both hallways finished. It looked beautiful! I love my floors.

A few days in January, my hubby and I put the floors in the guest bedroom and our daughters room (pictures coming soon!).

We were able to save thousands of dollars by doing this ourselves. Of course it took a lot of time and energy, but you can do it! It's definitely worth it. Oh . . . and I'm still loving my green walls (it's pretty funny to see people's reactions . . . "oh, it's . . . green" , "was this painted like this when you moved in?")

What DIY project are you working on?