Nesting????

Go Team Bartz!!!!! The baby is also wearing a respirator, don't worry!

The desire to get rid of the cream carpet in our living and dining room was overwhelming last Thursday evening. Kelly and I didn't have time to really think out what we may be living in for the next three months once we began pulling up the carpet. One might say we were blinded from the workload by the solid oak flooring we saw hiding under the layers of carpet, pad, cork, tarpaper, and endless amounts of glue. Not knowing the condition of the floors, we continued to keep our hopes high and pull, scrape, grind, and bust our butts all weekend long. Spotless oak floors were found and we couldn't be happier. I can't take much credit for scraping, but I was here sweeping and dragging cork, tar, and glue away from the work area. Because I was somewhat left out of the floor project weekend (it ended up turning into a 'dude festival'), I chose to begin my own very important task. Like it wasn't enough we currently had three other projects in progress, I decided to add another to the list and rid our kitchen of the lovely hunter green ivy wallpaper we've been living with since we moved here. I'm sure in 1982 the choice was perfect, but times have changed and hunter green and ivy are no longer 'cool'. BUT i obviously had NO idea the can of worms I was opening, even though Kel's momma had just done the same thing to her kitchen and warned me over and over again. Some call it 'stubborn', I call it learning through doing it yourself. Plus, there is really no way around removing the wallpaper if we want to get down to bare walls. Timing is the problem here. Our plan for quite some time has been to remodel our kitchen, but we've now added a few other projects on the way. Living in our bedroom is not too bad, small, but it's the only somewhat clean and cozy environment left. The goal is to have our home back by June...???!!! Is this too much to ask? My sister thought this was an over the top form of nesting, I'll go with that!

I'll leave you with the stunning photos of the new floors that Kelly has revealed through an entire day of sanding. Tomorrow he will lightly stain and poly coat them...which again I'll be out and about for the sake of the little tyke!

The project's beginning!

Old cream carpet, the carpet pad, cork underlayment, tarpaper under that followed by black glue! We were not as ambitious right away, thinking if we discovered poor flooring underneath we would keep the living room carpet and redo the dining room with some type of flooring.

Dustin was so kind to donate hands and knee time to scrape the glue off. Eventually a neighbor came over and told us about the Rip R Stripper, a powered floor stripper which Kelly is using in the photo to the right. Kelly's boss, Tony, also helped in the work while Brenda, Coco, and I hung out on our deck.

The floors after one weekend of power and hand stripping. The next step is to sand and poly. We were not sure if we'd hire a professional or if Kelly would take this on....but after the quote...we were left with little option other than to do it ourselves.

Beautiful white oak floors . . . our final destination! Thanks for everyone that helped along the way!

And for all who care to see the belly and button grow!