The Project That Just Happened

When we moved into our house there was a ledge between our living room and kitchen with a bunch of wooden rods and knick-knack shelves. They were terrible and not at all our style. We had lived there a month or so and were sitting in the living room and I randomly said that I really wanted to take them out. Carl said, "Ok." And he disappeared into the garage. When he came back he had a saw and he took them down right then and there.

Quite awhile ago our dishwasher was leaking and we didn't know it until it ruined our floor and started dripping down into the laundry room. Gradually the floor boards started separate. We've talked for a long time about what we want to replace it with but kept putting it off because we just didn't know.

Finally on a Sunday afternoon, less than two weeks before Aria's birthday party, I said, "Can we please just replace this floor?" And Carl said, "Ok." And he started tearing it out right then and there. We are the worst planners ever. We literally ripped out our kitchen floor and hadn't even decided what kind of floor we wanted to put in. And we had to figure it out and get it put in before Aria's party.

Goodbye old floor!

I just had to post this picture. A long time ago Carl replaced the random phone jack in the middle of our wall with this plate. In true Carl fashion he decided to put a magnet inside so I could hang my phone from it and stop losing it. It didn't work though and I completely forgot about it. But as he was doing this floor project he needed a magnet for something. And what did he do? He got a screw driver out and opened up our wall! I wonder how many other random things are hidden in the walls of our house!

For the next month our kitchen was varying degrees of useless and we ate our meals in the living room. Aria sat in her booster seat, the boys sat at their little folding table and Carl and I sat on the floor or a couch.

Check out the lovely tile that was under our floor!

We celebrated our Valentine's Day amidst the mess and it was so much fun. We love to have reasons to celebrate with our kids. :-)

Aria enjoyed her first food from Chipotle!

I always love making treats with the kids for Valentine's Day. But since our oven was in the garage we had to settle for Hy-Vee cupcakes. Luckily they were still delicious. :-)

The floor was finished the night before Aria's party. We finished putting appliances back at one in the morning and Carl finished framing a door just a couple hours before people got here. But it was finished! (Minus the trim.)

It is possible that I may have made Aria's birthday cake on the floor of the kitchen because Carl was still putting the place back together and the outlet in our island wasn't hooked up yet. At least it was a new floor!

So why did we spend another two weeks eating in the living room? Because once you start one project, they just keep coming. We never brought our dining room table back in from the garage because we decided to replace it. But due to four people with the flu and an unexpected injury, it took that long for us to actually go look at tables.

Now we have a finished floor, a new kitchen table that is making my life so much simpler (crazy how a table can do that) and we just painted most of our upstairs! It looks fresh and new and we love it. But I'm getting ahead of myself with that. When we get everything hung back on walls I'll try to remember to take some pictures. :-)