While Jim was away...

...this little mouse did play!

Err...

work, toil, sweat, shoulder flare up, knees aching...

along with a very good sense of accomplishment!

This is our dinning room...the very center of the house...

the room we very seldom actually use, though we pass through to get to where ever we're going.

We put new beautiful carpet in when we moved here 3.5 years ago, 

but since then alot has gone on...

namely JoJo!

This sweet girl has us trained to take her on 3 adventurous walks every day,

that's alot of going in and out and walking on that beautiful carpet in the center of the house.

Light carpet may have been a mistake and it makes me crazy that I just can't seem to keep it clean!

Solution...

While Jim was out of town for 12 days teaching basketball camps in Ireland with his guy friends...

I decided to rip out the carpet and re do the flooring...by myself!

(I actually did have a few extra hands every now and again from friends)

Roll credits...

BFF Lisa J helped me rip out the carpet

Vickie & Donna helped shuffle furniture around and give moral support

Sharon helped put furniture back in place

Tom redid baseboards and added flooring transitions

Jojo (the dog) gave me lots of questioning looks...

like this!

I actually ripped out the carpet the day after I dropped Jim at the airport,

without really knowing what I was going to put on the floor

once the carpet was gone.  

You may remember...

I had talked about and researched painting the sub floor with a really cool large diagonal check here,

though was disappointed to find it was particle board and not plywood sub floor.

Better to cover up the particle board than to try to paint over it's  many imperfections.

Wanting to stay on budget 

(since flooring was not even included in the budget)

I decided on a new product from Traffic Master called Ceramica.

It's a new peel and stick tile that's hard and very resilient,

and you grout it just like a ceramic tile!

Best part is I could do it myself with my large paper cutter

( it'll never be the same)

instead of a tile cutter.

So here we go...

Once the carpet was out, and all the tack strips, nails and staples were pulled out of the floor...

I primed the floors using Henry's Bond Enhancer

to be sure everything stayed stuck.

I owe my paper cutter a big round of applause,

it saved me from making many cuts with a matte knife.

My friend Donna gave me a bag of 1/8 tile spacers she had on hand

to set my tiles.

And yes, I did start at a center point just like the directions say you should. 

I never understood why you wouldn't start at a side wall, seems to be harder to start at center.

It's not...it really made laying lines that were easy to follow with my tiles much better.

Once you get started it goes fast

(until you get to the sides and cutting)

This was by far the hardest part...grouting! Mostly hard on the wrist and shoulder.

It looks great...though I now know never to take on a large project without Jim...

hard lesson.

He'll be helping me seal it all though, can't forget to seal the grout.

And now that the tile is done, time to find a carpet for under the dining table.

One stop and I found the perfect rug at HomeGoods right down the street from me,

Could it get any easier?

Needless to say...

Jim was pleasantly surprised to walk onto the new floor

when he arrived home from his trip.

And I was kinda surprised I had it done in a week!

We are loving the new floor!

Makes the room appear larger and certainly nice to not see

the old traffic marks on the carpet.

We recently had work done at the house and flooring was taken off the list

as it was way off budget adding an additional $5700. for vinyl plank flooring.

I did the same amount of flooring for around $800 including supplies, new rug, Tom's work...

and my time.

Time well spent!