Well this past weekend the carpet and I had it out.. I won!
Here is a basic before shot:
Now you will have to forgive the paper on the coffee table and the horrible angle.. but these photos were taken with my iPhone as a quick way to document this.
So what to replace the carpet with?? Replacing with carpet would have required us to move half of our house outside for the duration of time required to install new carpet...Which in turn meant on our deck in the heat of the summer... now this did not appeal to me. We considered ceramic tile.. I was worried the weight would be too much on the crawlspace... and the idea of installing all the backerboard that would be necessary... agh hard work! We considered laminate options...We have hard woods in another part of the house and if you can't match them... don't put more in... real or laminated. So that left us with...
Vinyl Tile! Yes that peel-n-stick tile.. kinda like Lee Press on nails for the floor!
Gotta love under $1 a sq foot, Armstrong 25 yr warranty from Lowe's!
So first things first.. Out with the carpet.... Easiest way... cut into 2' to 3' wide strips and roll it up.. tie with some twine and toss the roll out side.. Repeat for that strip of padding underneath!
Yeah so under that carpet padding was a lot of dust, silt and well dirt.. and we vacuum a lot!
After cutting, rolling, tieing... all the carpet and all the padding..We ended up finally seeing the floor under the carpet.. which turned out to be fairly decent quality vinyl sheet... but it was old and dull.
Before a mopping
After mopping!
So what is the first rule of DIY projects?? Anyone?? Anyone???...
Something unexpected will be uncovered and will add time,effort and probably cost to your project!
This time it consisted of a corner with water damage. Years ago there was a leak and the particle board which makes up the subflooring got wet. The leak has been fixed for as long as we have had the house... but the particle board had disintegrated... and thus a new patch of subflooring had to be installed.
Nothing like digging out a little particle board!
Clean sweep!
And patched!
Now to get up the ceramic tile that was in front of the door. We were grateful for small favors... it was not laid on backerboard.. but it was laid on 1/4" plywood and apparently who ever did it though it needed a bunch of screws!
A new form of anger management.. Tile Removal!!
(Trust me I was NOT angry when I was done.)
Now the plywood was a different story.. serious anger with all the screws.
Small spot where the old vinyl came up but the prep-cement will take care of that.
Obviously there was existing vinyl flooring that we didn't want to rip up. Hey it was "stuck down" really well... and it doubles as insulation and a moisture barrier... why bother taking it up. Well if you leave it down you have to use a cement type product mixed with a latex liquid to smooth out the embossed pattern in the existing surface AND provide a better surface to stick the new stuff to. So we mixed and spread via a trowel... the entire floor.. The best way to describe this is think peanut butter and a saltine cracker.. goal: get rid of the bumps without adding any more peanut butter then necessary...
The fully peanut buttered floor.
Finally getting to the good part.. actually laying the tile... which is pretty basic.. find the center of the room... drop a chalk line... do one quadrant of the room at a time.
1st quadrant. (we removed the moulding before laying the tile.. then replaced it)
Couch back in it's proper place... much better then having everything on the deck.
So we aren't sure what this little wire goes to.. but it is still there.
We discovered that if the DirecTv main box has no power.. the 2nd box has no signal.. TV got power quickly.
And in exactly 36 hours of hard work we have a new floor!!!! YEAHHHHH! Now if our poor pup will jsut remember that she spins out on it everything will be good to go!
I am a happy camper and we still need to paint my office and put tile in there.. but that will have to wait until this summer (major work project . cant take any chances of having my pc down!)
....... until the next time I get a bee in my bonnet.....
