When I had the bright idea of ripping up the carpet in my living room and placing new tile in my kitchen as well as painting the on top of it all…. I must have been on happy pills. I only have two weeks to compile this venture. My husband and I did not take into account the weather (it has been cold and rainy most of the time). Lack of space that we have for a lot of our items (big entertainment center that went out in the early 9o’s) large sectional sofa, large TV, all of the big-ticket items that your can usually place in the backyard in the spring or summer under a tent while working. NO….we did not thing of this. The entertainment center has been my Achilles heel. I HATE this thing. I would rather tear it apart into little pieces and watch it burn in a fire for all I care. Luckily it has retired to the basement with the promise that I will buy my husband and brand new 50 inch flat screen in return for the favor. The large out of date TV and even my parents don’t have anymore has also met its final resting place down below where old furniture goes to die.
We decided to go with the engineered hard wood for the flooring. Not as hard as the nail in hard wood and still as easy as the plank slide in laminate. It has a 25 year warranty and you can re-finish it once or twice. Hopefully we will be long gone by then. When we ripped the carpet up out of the living room, hallway and half of the bathroom we were appalled at all of the dust and dirt underneath! YUCK! I am reminded that we came from years of people buying homes that had beautiful hard wood just to cover it in carpet because hardwood was too hard to care for. Then we cover it with nasty carpet that we think is better because it is softer, warmer, and actually it is nothing but a carrier for dust, mites, and who knows what else!
We start laying down the planks. We find that my husband has no patience for this feat. Little does he know I was once a Tetris champion in my younger years and this job looks to me like a huge Tetris game. As I start putting the planks down making sure the seams are no more than 6 inches apart the floors look beautiful. It took us two days to get the living room, hallway, and bathroom complete. When I needed a board cut….that was his job! I would yell…CUT MY BOARD! Then he would come back with my board perfectly set for the rest of my row. It’s funny how an argument can turn out to be over T-moldings and Wedgings. Lowes became our second home and Wal-Mart our third. I called myself the Foreman because my word usually won afterall…
We were smart enough to hire someone to do the painting for us. We did learn that we should not have had them paint the trim…since we ended up taking it up and will probably replace it with something else. Oh well…live and learn. I told my husband to look at it this way. We hired some ladies to paint that needed a job, they needed to work, they had children, it was before Christmas, we added extra money to hopefully make their Christmas more enjoyable. You look at it as a waste of money…I look at it as a way of giving 
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I hope our kitchen adventure is as fun as the hardwood was. We have to lay down interlocking planks that look like tile. I am looking forward to having an almost new house! My next venture is to redo my bathroom and make my countertops in the kitchen look like granite (they sell kits for that)! For now you can just call me Bob Villa
