Oh Gosh

After being gone for 29 days, I came home to a big project of having my flooring replaced in the living room, kitchen & dining room.  I was going from a combination of ugly vinyl and old stained carpet, to 'luxury vinyl tile' that looks like dark wood.

I have disliked this vinyl since the first time I saw this house.
It was in good shape, just very ugly and always looked dirty, even when it was clean.

The carpeting was worn when I moved in,
8 years later and a couple of major spills of coffee and red wine, and it needed to go.

I've never liked carpet in an eating area, and this carpet was in rough shape,
so I covered it with another piece of carpeting.
It looked better.

 This project came right on top of unloading the car, 

getting my laundry caught up and going through 30 days of mail.  

The big furniture would be moved by the installer, but the smaller stuff was up to me.

So, my master bedroom and the guest bedroom because the storage rooms for everything.  

What chaos!

I learned that I don't like living like this AT ALL.
I could feel my stress level go up every-time I even looked into this room, and the guest room was no better.

Having just the subfloor / particle board to walk on was not fun.

Luckily this only lasted one evening.

Even the cats didn't like walking on this surface.

I could see the new flooring was going to be great, so that made it worth while.

 Once the rooms were empty, I could see I would have to paint before bringing everything back out to it's spot in the house.  

So, as soon as the flooring job was completed, I broke out the painting gear and got started.  The living room, and dining room got new paint and part of the kitchen hallway.

I plan to finish the kitchen and hallway soon, but those areas won't require the moving of furniture, 

so it can wait.

It's nice to say goodbye to this puke green color in the kitchen.

I'll like this latte color much better.

Then the fun of reloading the house.

It was a little like moving in the first time.

Where to hang what, maybe a change was due, and how much can I get rid of.

In the end, I kept most of my things, but I did change the layout of pictures and memorabilia wall.

 

Re-purposing the dining room rug makes for a cozy living room set up.

This Memorabilia Wall got the add on of Grandpa's post hole digger.
He used that to hand dig holes for electric poles back in the '30s.  It's a keepsake worth displaying.

The kitchen still needs paint, but the flooring is a major improvement.
The ugly vinyl is under this lovely wood look.

I moved my photo wall to the dining room.
I'm not sure these are all placed how I like, but it was s start.
I also am going to find a more substantial topper for the bank of oak cabinets that my Dad made when he remodeled my Colorado kitchen.  This bank of cabinets was under a bar in Arvada, and was not longer needed once the bar was lowered to table height.  I hated leaving my oak kitchen in Colorado, but it is hard to sell a house with no cabinets in the kitchen.
I was able to snag these and bring them along to Rice Lake, but a different topper is needed, sometime.

No longer a rug under the table, and I'm so plaeased.

 I moaned and groaned about the chaos, the work of painting, the moving of stuff, 

but Oh Gosh, what a great result.

The cats are happy and I'm happy.

Now I can take some time to reflect on the Big Trip Out West 

and add some more postings about that fun deal.