Bigger Than the Three of Us

Wood Flooring Decision

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Let’s talk wood flooring. Spoiler, I ordered wood flooring last week! Yay! I’m so excited, well nervous, but excited. Let’s talk about what we considered first and then I will tell you what we ultimately went with.

Our town has a mill, called Vermillion. They mill red and white oak in 3″, 4″ and 5″ planks. Their flooring comes unfinished, meaning that you have to have it installed, stained onsite and then have a clear coat put over that. The process for the install is much longer because of the dry times for the topcoats. I had originally gone to Vermillion last year and loved their milled flooring, prices and just that they were local. I was scared off because of the extra work the unfinished flooring would be. Vermillion also sells pre-finished hardwood and engineered hardwood but everything I liked was way out of my budget. #storyofmylife

So, basically last year, I had gotten my samples from Vermillion, checked out other local flooring businesses and ordered samples from BuildDirect.  It all seemed overwhelming.  Money was tight on being able to do the main rooms that we wanted to do (1500 sq feet) and having it installed. So, we decided to wait. We DIY lots of things around here, but the flooring is just too much for us to tackle. We have a custom circular staircase in our entryway, which we knew would be a huge undertaking to create custom stair treads for, as well as two different circular trim pieces. So, this wasn’t going to be a DIY project for us. As usual though, I have found ways to save on it and will share those at the end!

So, fast forward to this year and the last few months. We are finally ready to pull the trigger and just get ‘er done.

Over the last 6 weeks, I have ordered more samples (mainly from BuildDirect) and gone back to the stores in our area (including Vermillion). Luke and I both love lighter wood flooring, similar to these:

Light wood floor

Image via Greige Design

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Browsing Floors

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I thought that when we were ready to install hardwood flooring in our house it would be easy. Hmm, not so much. I think we are ready, I hope we are ready, but now I’m scared. There are so many options! Two years ago when we moved in to this house, I KNEW that I wanted dark hardwood floors. Now, I’m realizing that I would never keep them clean and that would drive me nuts. Also, I like the look of more natural, weathered wood. So, I ordered some samples and, so far, they haven’t helped me.

Do you know how hard it is to choose a wood color/texture based off of a 8 inch square? Impossible!

I have a few places to check out in town before I commit to a company or style, but I thought I would keep you guys in the loop.

Here are my inspiration floors:

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via

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Oak-Fundyvia

Oak-Fog2via

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grey-floors

via

I’m pretty sure most of these floors have the following criteria: large plank, matte, and unfinished. So, we are gathering sources, pricing, and more information on this type of floor.

We are planning (and hoping) to install it on the front circle stairs, loft area, upstairs, upstairs hallway, master bedroom and possibly the main living room. Price, of course, will further determine what gets replaced. The lowest on the list is the living room because it has the best carpet out of the ones listed.

Any of you have any great recommendations for suppliers or color? Any other advice?

Hallway Bathroom Tile : Part 1

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I posted this on Instagram last week:

instagram picture of bathroom carpet in progress

I decided one afternoon to take some of the carpet out of Greyson’s bathroom. We’ve been talking about tiling his bathroom, but have been wavering back and forth on when…well I decided to go for it. I only took a strip of the carpet out the first day because I wanted to: A). See what Luke thought and B). Be able to use the bathroom.

Well, all was good with Luke (as expected) so the next afternoon I took the rest of it out.

Then, the boys helped get all the staples and carpet tack strips up. After that we gave it a good vacuuming.

putting the toddler to work vacuuming

Because we had carpet in our bathroom, we had to take out the particle board that was under the carpet. While working on that this happened:

breaking hammer

I didn’t even realize that could happen. Call me crazy, I guess. We had to make a trip to Lowe’s to get a jigsaw, another hammer and a chisel.

We took the toilet out and then got busy taking up the particle board. After we had the right supplies to take the particle board up it went pretty fast. As expected, our subfloor was rotted underneath the toilet area (skip the next picture if you don’t want to see it).

rotten subfloor

But, the rest of the subfloor looked great. So, Luke cut the rotten subfloor out and then we had to go get new plywood to replace it with. Well, this should have taken one trip to the hardware store but it actually took three. We misunderstood, at first, and thought we need to replace the 1/2″ particle board. So we bought 1/2″ plywood (our first trip to buy wood). The plywood we needed was 9/32″ but we decided to try the 1/2″ before buying something else. Then, after measuring it and putting it in we realized that it wasn’t level. I went to Lowe’s to get the right one and told them that I had 5/8″ plywood (we missed the measurement by 1/32″). They sold another piece to me. Come to find out it was too thick. After all that, we found out that Home Depot actually caries the correct measurement. So, another trip to the hardware store yielded the right piece of wood. Apparently it’s good to measure plywood in 32nds of an inch. Who knew!

Once we got the right sized plywood, Luke measured it and got it cut.

replacing rotten subfloor

He reinforced the support beams around the new plywood. Then we placed the original water barrier back down.

subfloor all up and moisture barrier down

Then we started measuring and putting in the cement board. The cement board was pretty easy to do after we got the hang of it. All we did was make sure the seams of the board didn’t go directly on any seams of the plywood.

cement board down

almost done with cement board

12 hours later finished with part 1….

cement board install complete

So, I think if you knew what you were doing this part of the process probably would have only taken 4-5 hrs. We had to do multiple trips to the hardware stores and also went in circles with putting in the new subfloor. After all was said and done though, we learned a lot. Next time, it won’t be too bad.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

How to Grout Peel and Stick Tile

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I showed our bathroom nook reveal a few weeks’ back and during that blog post I said that we went with peel and stick tile. Well, I wanted to elaborate just a bit on why and what the process was.

When we bought this house, we had done zero home improvement things other than painting a few walls. Moving in to this house, we inherited four bathrooms, all with carpet (YUCK!).  We knew we wanted to get our feet wet doing home improvement. So, when we started the light update in our bathroom we decided that peel and stick vinyl tile was the way to go. It was about $1.50 a sq foot, but didn’t require any underlayment, sticky stuff or tile cutting saws. We saw all of that as a plus. Another thing that factored in to our decision is that we don’t expect to have this bathroom forever. We would like to do a pretty big bathroom renovation in the future, so learning a bit about the tile process in an inexpensive way was great.

I’ll tell you a bit about how we did things.

Step one : Rip up carpet, all tack strips and staples.

Step two: Vacuum plywood and then dry brush it (there are some recommendations for chemical cleaning agents, but we didn’t use any)

Step 3: Figure out placement (brick pattern or other, etc.)

Step 4: Peel backing off and start laying the tile. Press firmly on each tile. We used a rolling pin on some and then used our feet on others.

Step 5: Use a razor knife to score any tiles that need to be “cut”.

peel and stick tile in the bathroom

Step 5: Grout (Making sure to sponge off excess to eliminate the “fog”)

Step 6: Let dry.

bathroom with peel and stick tile

All in all the space above probably took around six hours.

This "how-to" tutorial will show you how to grout peel and stick tile. it's so easy!

We are happy with the results for sure. Vinyl tile isn’t for everyone but it definitely fit our needs at this time. Also, it gave us confidence to tackle a real tile job which we will be starting soon!

1 Bathroom floor down and 3 to go. Cheers!

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