When you are looking to purchase flooring, what do you look for, Style or Quality? For me, it all depends on what project I am working on. This house I am working on is a rental house but I want it to look nice and last for a while.
When I am replacing my home floors or for a house I am going to resell, I go for Quality and Style! The Kitchen is one floor you don't want to skimp on. I love wood flooring or tile flooring in the kitchen. Make sure you do your homework before buying. Don't just fall in love with the looks of the flooring and then later realize that the flooring was made poorly.
With the flooring I used for this rental house, I went to Home Depot and purchased Traffic Master stick down tiles. I know they don't call them "stick down tiles" but that is my little nick name I use. I like the brand Traffic Masters because they are a much thicker tile and holds up to heavy traffic just like the brand name suggest. Some other brand tiles maybe cheaper but they are much thinner and easily tear.
There is a proper way to lay this flooring. Don't worry it is much simpler than you might think. I will dicuss this later and have pictures to help illustrate how this is done.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
How I Replaced My Kitchen Flooring
This kitchen has been work in process for some time now. We are about to lay down the new flooring but so much had to be done to prepare before we could lay the floor down.
First of all, I decided to paint the walls and cabinets. The walls were a beautiful bright yellow color..YUCK! So we changed the color to beige and did the trim in white. This took some time to cover up. Then I painted the cabinets white to match the trim. I wanted to get all the painting down so I would not mess up the new floors.
The entire kitchen is being redone. We are replacing the countertops and sink. So I want to make sure all the colors are going to match and have the look I am going after. We are purchasing the new flooring tomorrow. We have decided to go with the stick down tiles instead of the linoleum. When talking to the flooring dealer in our area, he told us because our diminsions were 8x15 and to buy linoleum on the roll would come 12x?, so we would be wasting a lot of material. It was actually cheaper for us to purchase the stick down tiles that you would find at Home Depot or Lowe's. Since this house is not for resale value purposes we are going to us the tiles.
First of all, I decided to paint the walls and cabinets. The walls were a beautiful bright yellow color..YUCK! So we changed the color to beige and did the trim in white. This took some time to cover up. Then I painted the cabinets white to match the trim. I wanted to get all the painting down so I would not mess up the new floors.
The entire kitchen is being redone. We are replacing the countertops and sink. So I want to make sure all the colors are going to match and have the look I am going after. We are purchasing the new flooring tomorrow. We have decided to go with the stick down tiles instead of the linoleum. When talking to the flooring dealer in our area, he told us because our diminsions were 8x15 and to buy linoleum on the roll would come 12x?, so we would be wasting a lot of material. It was actually cheaper for us to purchase the stick down tiles that you would find at Home Depot or Lowe's. Since this house is not for resale value purposes we are going to us the tiles.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
How I Replaced My Kitchen Flooring
I am currently working on a new rental house that we just purchased. It never fails to amaze me how people can go into a house to steal copper that totals about $20 and does over $20,000 damage to a home.
This happens to be the case on a house we are currently working at now. They have gone in and stolen all the copper plumbing from the house and clipped wires to try to take out the copper from inside. This will be another post I will be working on later this month.
Today, I want to discuss the replacing of kitchen flooring or any flooring for that matter. I will have pictures tomorrow of what I am working on. We bought this home and it had decent kitchen pergo flooring. Not in bad shape at all except for the fact that when you walked on it it felt like you were walking on a air mattress. So my job was to remove the flooring and see what the problem was underneath.
If you have never done this before, thats ok this was my first time as well. I am "Floor Replacement Virgin!" For you ladies out there that think that you can't do this ....YOU CAN!! If I did it you can too! First, you must go around the baseboards with a small crowbar and gently remove the baseboards and any quarter round moulding. Pull up any floor vents in the room and remove any floor stripping entering other rooms. Once you have done this you can find a good starting point to start removing the flooring. I had the slide in pergo flooring to remove. After I removed the first few pieces the others just slid out easily. If you are lucky there won't be any other flooring to remove. That was not the case for me...I had 8 more layers of old flooring to remove. This house had been built back in 1948 and had the flooring to prove it!
Somehow the floor had gotten wet from a water leak and was still very wet underneath. It was like that 4 layers down. I started with the first layer of linoleum and started ripping it out and removing nails as I went.
In my next post I will have pictures and more details of how this job is coming along!
This happens to be the case on a house we are currently working at now. They have gone in and stolen all the copper plumbing from the house and clipped wires to try to take out the copper from inside. This will be another post I will be working on later this month.
Today, I want to discuss the replacing of kitchen flooring or any flooring for that matter. I will have pictures tomorrow of what I am working on. We bought this home and it had decent kitchen pergo flooring. Not in bad shape at all except for the fact that when you walked on it it felt like you were walking on a air mattress. So my job was to remove the flooring and see what the problem was underneath.
If you have never done this before, thats ok this was my first time as well. I am "Floor Replacement Virgin!" For you ladies out there that think that you can't do this ....YOU CAN!! If I did it you can too! First, you must go around the baseboards with a small crowbar and gently remove the baseboards and any quarter round moulding. Pull up any floor vents in the room and remove any floor stripping entering other rooms. Once you have done this you can find a good starting point to start removing the flooring. I had the slide in pergo flooring to remove. After I removed the first few pieces the others just slid out easily. If you are lucky there won't be any other flooring to remove. That was not the case for me...I had 8 more layers of old flooring to remove. This house had been built back in 1948 and had the flooring to prove it!
Somehow the floor had gotten wet from a water leak and was still very wet underneath. It was like that 4 layers down. I started with the first layer of linoleum and started ripping it out and removing nails as I went.
In my next post I will have pictures and more details of how this job is coming along!
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
How I Remodeled My Kitchen
Every woman loves to have her perfect kitchen. My husband and I both do the cooking for the family and having a workable kitchen is a must for the both of us. Together we have 5 children and it seems like dinnertime can be such a chore. Making the kitchen organized and having the room needed to cook meals is a must for us!
We also had a bare space for the stove but we needed more cabinets for the area to complete the look we were going for.
We took all the cabinets out
We changed the paint from white to light beige and the trim was done in white. We rehung the cabinets to become level and added handles on the cabinet doors.
With one of the first homes we purchased, the kitchen was a disaster! The floors were ripped out, the cabinets were hung crooked so the doors would not open without hitting the ceiling. They had a place to put a dishwasher but didn't allow enough room for it. We did not have the money to redo an entire kitchen but needed to make it workable. Our budget was very slim so we had to make changes that would make the kitchen look more modern but remain within our budget. Here is the before picture:
We also had a bare space for the stove but we needed more cabinets for the area to complete the look we were going for.
We took all the cabinets out
We changed the paint from white to light beige and the trim was done in white. We rehung the cabinets to become level and added handles on the cabinet doors.
The dishwasher was a must for this house, so we took out a bottom cabinet and aligned the cabinets to look even and added a dishwasher with a fake end cabinet.
The flooring we searched on Craigslist to find someone in our area who happened to be selling flooring for the price we could afford.
Beside the stove, we added two cabinets that someone was selling on Craigslist and painted them white to match the others. The finished kitchen ended up costing us $300 and two weeks worth of work. I was very pleased!
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