A Little Home Improvement

     Since moving in we have talked about getting new carpet. The carpet in the house was old, matted down and had been used by two other families. We finally decided to go for it this year. Once we were decided on carpet we decided we should also repaint and then we thought since we were painting we might as well do the baseboards too.
    We started shopping around and got a little sticker shock at the first place we went to. The total on the carpet we wanted was going to cost $5200 to do the upstairs, stairs and family room. Ouch! A lower quality carpet option was $3800. We sat on that for a little while and then I decided to set out on my own, well with Hannah and Grayson to look at some other places. The next one I hit was pretty much the same price but had crappy selection. Then I decided to try this place in Lindon we had been to before. Surprisingly there prices were much better. They also had our number one choice carpet in stock. They came out and measured and their bid came back at $4100 for the higher end carpet. So needless to say we went with them.

       Now that we had carpet squared away we started looking at paint colors. I thought this would be an easy process but I was SO wrong! We borrowed a couple neighbors samples but we didn't like any of them. We had decided to go gray and its a really difficult color. Some grays take a purple or blue look and I didn't want that. We stopped by all the paint stores and got samples but nothing was right. We found one we liked and bought a gallon and painted the wall between the kitchen and family room it and well I HATED it! With our walls all crazy with random spots of gray paint on them I had pretty much given up on finding THE paint color.
      Fortunately the moldings went smoother. The little kids and I met Dave at Stock Supply one afternoon and got some samples and prices on moldings. We brought them home and were able to make a decision.
      Before carpet was installed Dave took a Saturday afternoon to add some lighting to our family room. One of my main complaints about our house was how dark it always was in the family room. So Dave added four can lights. He was pretty proud of how well this job went ;)

We finally got to install time. Dave took off a couple days to get the house ready for carpet. He decided to start in the family room with pulling the old baseboards off. Well he pulls the baseboard off and is hit with a horrible smell. He pulls the carpet back there and sees what could be water damage. Oh crap! He pulled all the baseboards in the family room and then we pulled carpet. We noticed the smell was worse in the corners. We finally came to the realization that it wasn't water damage but pet urine. Gross! I borrowed my neighbors black light to find all the spots in the house. Parts of the family room were so bad that we had to cut the drywall out and put in new pieces. At this point I was thinking I'm so happy we decided to replace the carpet and molding because it was obviously needed. We had always thought the house had a bit of a smell. We just thought it was the carpet but now we knew the true culprit. Unfortunately all the urine clean up and repair killed our time and Dave wasn't able to get the moldings all switched out before carpet installation.

One spot where we had to cut out ruined Sheetrock

Pulling out all the staples. We saved a lot of money by pulling the old carpet out ourselves.

     So the carpet was set to be installed on Monday, April 11th. On Saturday the 9th we started seriously thinking about knocking 'the wall" down. We called a neighbor with the same floor plan that we knew didn't have the wall to go check it out. We liked what we saw. It made the area feel bigger. Currently we were pretty squished trying to fit at the table. So that afternoon we decided to go ahead and knock the wall down. We had plenty of help with the demo.

Erin Dean from across the street wanted in on the action too!

Hello Mess!

     With our house a total wreck we opted for fast food on the tramp for dinner.

      We moved all the kids down to the basement for this project. Even though Tanner had a room in the basement he moved out to the family room with the rest of them. Grayson on the other hand slept in Tanner's room.

With the kids all moved out of their rooms I thought it would be the perfect time to paint their rooms and have the boys and girls switch rooms. You see the closet in the boys room was over twice as big and I really thought the girls could use that much closet space. So on top of everything else we scrubbed walls and got them ready for paint.

Wall cleaning helper

     So Saturday night we made a run to Home Depot to find some tile that could work to fill in where the wall was. We ran around the store like crazy getting what we needed. WE left at closing but were able to find the supplies. I found this tile that was different then what we had but a similar color and I thought it looked like a good border tile. That night Dave got to work on laying the tile. I stayed up to help. The floor ended up taking until 3am. I tried to stay up but failed.

   After that we cleaned up and were ready for the carpet guy on Monday. The install took 1 and a half days. He did the upstairs and stairs the first day and just had the family room left. Well Dave came home and wasn't sure about the carpet. He had them bring by more samples and he was seriously thinking about pulling up the stuff that was just laid. Argh! I was stressed. I had my Mom come over and give me her opinion. She liked it and so did I. So I called the carpet guy back and told him to finish the job. I knew Dave was just in shock with the change and in a week or two would be used to the new look.

So as soon as the carpet was done Dave got to work on painting three of the girls four walls(I had special plans for the 4th wall). Once the girls room was painted Dave got the trim done on the main floor and with no idea on a paint color our home improvement work was put on hold.

Grayson the Helper