So by now you all know we love tile and remodeling. So, in January we decided to do another big project. We had our tile expert come up from Utah to help us tile our entry way, part of our living room, eating area, kitchen, and laundry room (around 500 sq ft)! Below are our before, during, and after pictures.
This was the main reason why we did this. We really wanted to connect our entry way and our kitchen and get rid of the carpet in between. Extending the hardwood would have been very difficult so we decided to just tile it all.
We had hardwood before. It actually looks really nice from the pictures but in real life it was badly scratched up and damaged from previous owners with the wood seperating, water damage, and some burn marks. We could refinish it all but it actually would have cost about the same amount to tile it all as it would to refinish it.
This partof the hardwood was the one that was not as damaged. It was hard to pull this part up because it did look reasonably nice.
Okay, now the during pictures. WHAT A MESS THIS WAS!!! Pulling up the hardwood was hard with lots of staples to be removed and it formed a cloud of dust that covered everything in our house. It took me (Sharese) a month of wiping every inch of our home to get rid of this (early Spring cleaning). It felt like we lived in a home that was just constructed. It was an interesting experience. This kids and I basically lived upstairs away from it all because I had a hard time with it all. This is a picture of our laundry room which at the time had lanolium.
The hallway from our laundry room to the kitchen, had hardwood.
Our kitchen. Kory took out the island. That was fun.
Our living room became our storage area for everything. We managed to eat still the majority of our meals in our living room with only the fridge and microwave and BBQ.
These pictures are much better. Our new tile!!! In the end it was all worth it. It was hard, but worth it. We love the look of our tile. It is nice to see not so much wood anymore and this stuff is sturdy and will withstand our kids. We still have a lot of work to do with the baseboards and sealing the tile and painting all the boo-boos that happened along the way. We are waiting for Mom and Dad to come help with the finishing work.
We have sucessfully connected the entry way to the kitchen and we really like it. It saves our carpet.
Easter was fun this year. It was Conference time and we luckily live right next to the park that they have the Easter egg hunt so we went over and got some candy to eat while watching Conference. I also volunteered to help the poor lady in our ward in charge of it, she needed someone to go around and pick up the dog poop (YUCK), so we basically missed the first session of Conference. Luckily it was recorded and we have it in the Ensign to read.
Kason had his first birthday on April 30th. We kept things simple with just our family. Kory had gone down to So. Utah for a baby blessing for his brother and so he was not here for the birthday. McKay was sick with the stomach flu in the morning and when he felt better we went to the toy store and picked out some presents. We then spent a lot of the afternoon making Kason's crazy cake that ended up yummy but kind of a mess. We did not know what we were doing. I have learned I am a lousy cake decorator. At night we ate pizza, opened presents, ate cake and off to bed. It was a great day. The best thing was giving Kason a sippy cup full of whole milk! He hated it and spit it out. It has been almost a whole month now and he still does not really like whole milk. He is getting better very slowly though, except he only drinks it if I mix some ovaltine in with it. Some day soon I am hoping to cut that out.
McKay got some new rollerblade hand me downs from Jefferson and all winter has been practicing in our house. He can now go outside and anywhere on his rollerblades. He puts them on almost daily to ride around in our house. HE LOVES THEM!! I am glad we have tile now, our old wood floors would not have liked them very much.
We enrolled McKay in soccer this Spring. It is his first year and it has been hard for him to learn the game. He has made some new friends and has enjoyed going to practices and playing around with them. We have had many cold games and rainy weather. It was a good experience for us as a family. I am not sure we will continue it, but we will see.
