A Kitchen Renovation: Laminated Part 1.

Why is this labeled part 1? The floors are finished, so part 1 is obviously about the floors. Part 2 is our decision to cut costs after all the surprise work we had done on the electrical and plumbing, and the fact it’s a small kitchen,and although people gather in there, it’s not enough to justify $2,000 for a luxury item. I’m sure you can figure that one out.

But onto our floors: they’re amazing! They were a mere $1.60/sf from Lumber Liquidators. We went in there to browse and get an idea on the cost of floors. We had been to Orange (HD) and Blue (Lowes) to get an idea, and were quickly turned away with the $3 and $4 pricetags attached to the very attractive options. Although we wanted something that LOOKED expensive, we didn’t actually want to buy the expensive stuff. We didn’t want to sacrifice durability for a cheap pricetag either, since the kitchen is our main entrance to the house being that our carport is in the backyard and our friends and family can pile cars up back there.

Yeah, we have a lot of room for parking. So we spotted this amazing pricetag on these amazing floors and decided to scoop them up with an added bonus: there was an odd-lot in the same flooring where only the top plank was ruined, but it was being sold for $.89/sf! So we went home with a truck bed full of flooring and asked a friend/contractor for a price on installation. We got him down to $2/sf, but Drew was convinced we could do this ourselves. Much to my dismay, I agreed, and we borrowed my dad’s table saw and got a $15 floor laying kit at Orange (pull bar, spacers and some floor risers), and grabbed a handful of tools from the shed:

Even while I was sick, we got it done this weekend. It was SO easy. Of course, I’m terrified of saws so he did all the hard work.

Here’s a picture I snapped ALMOST finished. Aren’t they spectacular?:

I can’t leave out our little helper, Rupert. See his paw dangling in the photo above? Here’s him supervising when he’s not pawing at our tools trying to help us:

Here’s a little before and after of putting our cute little 20” stove back in it’s place. I miss having all that room to run around in already (and I don’t know why the first shot looks so orangey! The second shows the true floor and wall colors):

And lastly, our new washer/dryer stack. We had them side by side since we moved in, but little miss 4’11” here needs more lower cabinets to reach anything, so stacked these must be:

We started on the cabinets last night. I love the dark black/brown with the warm colored floor and walls. I just need to hunt for the perfect curtains to pull all the shades together!