A floor of a thousand miles begins with...

...a whole lot of laminate from IKEA! After Wesley was sent home from the doctor with symptoms of breathing trouble we decided to replace our old carpet. It had flooded right before we moved in a few years ago and was musty I think ever since. Wesley being so sick helped us decide to finally get rid of it.


It took hours and hours of work. Josh and I were so sore!
Annie wanted to help, so she grabbed Wesley's plastic hammer and started banging on the baseboards like Dada was doing. She always wants to help, it's so precious. :)
step 1. pull up carpet and baseboards
step 2. get really really sick from pulling up the carpet without wearing a mask
step 3. wash the floor
step 4. make multiple trips to IKEA and Lowes to find laminate
step 5. get the materials finally decided upon.
step 6. lay plastic down over cement and add squishy foam on top of that while your wife takes the kids to various stores and playgrounds in between nap times. *note: if laying foam or plastic requires cutting you must employ the resident cutting-in-straight-lines expert, aka Jessica.
step 7. decide how many inches exactly to use on the very first row-last-plank so you can "stagger" the planks. *note: this could take an hour since IKEA instructions are made for people who cannot read and are fluent in pictures.
step 8. decide to finally just cut the last plank against the said instructions and continue laying flooring. *note: try not to wake up your sleeping kids with the mallet hitting the boards in place.
step 9. decide to do the hallway and baseboards a different weekend!

We really like how it looks and are very grateful for the Lord's provision. :)

I also have to say...guys really are better in general at construction type work. I work out and strength train a lot, but I had lots of trouble getting tack strips up with a mallet and crowbar - and Josh made it look easy! I couldn't hold the saw cause my hands were too small to turn the safety off and push the on button at the same time (so it wouldn't even turn on for me). Then I couldn't place the boards very well since it required a long arm span and muscly push to get them in place. It was funny to me seeing the difference, but I was able to help Josh some and make it go a little bit faster than if it was just him. Yay for teamwork! :)