Alec & Emma's Blog: November 2011

I kind of feel like we've been living in a slight state of chaos over the last week or two. Sunday before Halloween, Aaron started demolishing the tile in our foyer. Remember that because of the 8 year leak in our formal dining room, (that was finally fixed last year, but we needed a year to really really believe that it was truly fixed) we needed to replace the flooring in the great room. We decided forever ago on hardwood, and it's just taken this long to decide on which one and when to actually break down and do it.

Aaron wanted to leave the tile in the foyer, at first, and then decided, along with me, that it would look nicer to have all hardwood in the foyer, dining, living room and hallway. It's just that it was such a monumental pain in the rear. Seriously, I don't think I can ask him to do any other "honey do" work for a really really long time. He had to borrow a rotary hammer and chisel away at the tile and mastic. It took days. It was loud, it made the house ridiculously dusty, and it was downright HARD work. I got in there one day, and worked on the adhesive with a cold chisel. I worked an hour and cleared about 3 sq feet. Good grief.

Our friend, Wes, a contractor/builder/knowshowtodoitaller, came last Thursday and started cutting into the wall in the hallway to frame up two new closets. Yeah, that's right. Our builder didn't give us any storage/coat/linen closets in the hallway. Now we're getting two. Oh, I can't tell you how exciting it is to have two new spaces to store clutter! Seriously stoked about that! Friday and Saturday the guys laid the floor, after the foyer was FINALLY cleared of tile crap. I helped Aaron prep the subfloor, pulling up carpet, vacuuming dust, etc.

It is done now, and it looks so so awesome. I'm thrilled with it! We haven't moved back into the living room yet, because we need to touch up the baseboards, but we're almost there. Wes will come Monday to finish the closets with doors and shelves. Drywall is up, taped and mudded. I'll paint this weekend. Here are a few pics of all the fun!

This first one is of the kids in their Halloween costumes. Spidey and Supergirl. They just so happened to wear these costumes the whole time the work was going on in our house. We went to Lowe's twice dressed like this!