Battle of Floors



I haven't had to do much research on flooring.  I've experienced all types.  So, I knew just what I wanted to replace the carpet in the bedrooms and possibly in the rest of the house in due time.

Wood - Our last house had wood flooring.  It was beautiful and quiet, and easy to do a quick daily sweep through.  After a while, I began to hate it.  I couldn't mop it the old fashioned way.  I tried the wood floor cleaners and every one of them left a haze, taking away the shine.  I could see footprints where the haze would be buffed by the traffic.  I did finally find the perfect way to clean that floor without the haze and that was with a steam mop.  It wasn't a big house, but by the time I steam mopped that floor, I was beat.  Also, it scratched incredibly easy.  Now, this wasn't the old kind of wood floor where it was real planks of wood like the house I grew up in.  It was the fabricated kind (I guess that's what you call it) where if it was scratched, it was scratched, and there was not much you could do to hide it.  You couldn't refinish it. 

Laminate - I've had this kind too.  It was truly durable.  We had a flood in that house too..a terrible one.  We were renting and the house had particle wood sub floors (which I had never seen in a home that wasn't mobile)  When it flooded, the entire house had hills and valleys going all through it where the carpet was. Wow, if you could have seen that!  The kitchen also flooded, but it had laminate in it on top of the particle wood sub floor.  The laminate held it down flat and it didn't even buckle itself.  I was very impressed.  It cleaned easily and maybe it was because I didn't have the sun shining directly on it,  but it didn't seem to streak when I mopped it.  Oh, and I could actually mop it!  I'm not a big Swiffer Wet Jet fan, in case you haven't noticed.  My problem with laminate was the noise it made.  When I walk on one, I feel like I should break out in tap. ;)  I like quiet.

Vinyl - I think every home in America has had some sort of vinyl flooring in it at one point or another.  It quick, easy, and cheap.  It's mostly very recognizable, especially the older kind, but it's easy to clean, probably the easiest, and is what?  Quiet?  Yep!  Not the choice for most people, but I don't have a problem with it.  Lessens the value of your home in comparison to other types, but I'm not selling, even if I threaten to.

Carpet - Although I do love the coziness of carpet, especially in a bedroom, notgonnahappen.

Ceramic  or other Hard Surface Tile - Way too permanent for me.  I know it's not permanent permanent, but having it makes me feel that way.  I wouldn't want to go through the work of tearing it up.  On the other hand, having it on the walls of an older home I've lived in and flooded, it held that water from getting into the other rooms.  I fell in love with it then at that moment.  It's too hard and cold for me though.  I like cozy.  Tile would only be in the wet areas of my home.

So, with all that being said, I've chosen to go with vinyl for the bedrooms.  I'm not getting the sheet vinyl, though.  I'm getting the vinyl planks which makes it easier for me, myself to install.  If there's a place that may get damaged, I can just replace that plank.  Easy peasy.  If it floods again, I haven't lost anything.  It's just the bedrooms for now, so I think this is the easiest, quickest, cheapest, fix out there.  If I don't like it in the long run, I'm not out much money. 

The top left picture looks just like the wood flooring I had in my last home.  It makes me miss that floor, but I know better. ;)

Shabby Chic Bedroom

Taking Morgan along for the ride to Canton was a very wise decision on my part.  Aside from the time spent together and loving all that was to see, Morgan found her style. 

Loving the choice she made, I found an old book I had in my stash and gave it to her for inspiration and for me to know exactly what she's looking for in her bedroom.  I've had this book forever now, and it's finally coming in handy.

As I was getting all the things out of her room to be able to pull up the carpet, I found the book on her bed with Post-Its sticking out of the pages.

Here are her some of her choices:

With all the work that has been done around here and all that's still left to do, Bud offered me a glimpse of hope.  Shamefully, my car hasn't been washed since we came back from the beach, what a month ago?  So, yeah, it still had that salt all over it and it looked horrible.  He asked if he could take it to the car wash and wash it.  Um yeah!  Don't have to ask me again, Son!  Now I'll have a clean ride up to Dallas to get my Morgan.

I've been working on refinishing that 12 buck headboard I bought for Emily's room.  I have no idea really where to go with it.  She is wanting an Indian inspired bedroom with all the deep colors, so I'm trying to figure out exactly what color I should do the furniture.  Right now, it's black, but I'm not sure that's going to work.  We will see.  I'll need to do it in a hurry though, because in about 2 weeks, the flooring will be in and the girls' bedrooms will be beautiful!  Can't wait!  Oh, just can't wait.

How Frugal is TOO Frugal?

I love the look of hardwood floors.  Actually, who doesn't?   I also believe in saving as much money as possible and when it comes to hardwood floors, it can get quite expensive.  There are cheaper alternatives, though.  Laminate, vinyl, etc.  We all know this.  One could even paint a faux wood floor and get off even cheaper.  Are there even less expensive solutions to get that wood look you want?

Apparently, there have been those who have tried.  At least I'm guessing so anyway.  Unless this is a flooring prepping technique even Google couldn't find, I'm thinking this is exactly what this is all about:

I found this under the carpet I was ripping up today.

My main question and concern is this:  

Even IF (highly unlikely) it originally looked like wood, how is tape supposed to be cleaned exactly?  

Floor prep or faux finish, either way, whoever put this tape down, did it meticulously.  

I was afraid of what I was going to find under it.  After all, this is an old home, so surely it has years of people not taking the time to rip out previous flooring.

Whew!  Concrete!  

The tape wasn't even hard to scrape up.  It's still very wet though, so I'm sure that's why.

Still a very long way to go.  I have my work cut out for me, no doubt.

The smell is getting worse and I'm starting to sneeze a lot.  Bad sign of growth I don't want in my home.

The silver lining?  New flooring of course!

Bedtime.

EDITED TO ADD THIS:

I couldn't sleep (due to the smell in the house), so I started scraping more of the "tape" off the floor.  The bigger pieces I was able to detach made me realize it looked more like brown paper bags rather than masking tape.  So, I Googled this technique and sure enough, crazy enough, it exists.

I realize I don't have to scrape all that up for new flooring, but it's obviously wet and it is becoming moldy as well.  I just want to do it right and start fresh and clean.

Our First Garden

Ok, second, but since the first one years ago didn't do anything, we won't count that one.

I was so excited this morning when I walked out to our garden and saw corn silks peeking through!  I've kept an eye on it since the plants topped the other day.  I just checked it yesterday and there was still no sign of anything coming through.  Things do seem to happen overnight here, though.

Our cucumbers seem to be the only thing really progressing.  We are already loaded with them!  Clayton says he doesn't like big cucumbers and wants me to pick them before they get longer than about 7 inches or so.  I have no idea about any of this, so I'm wondering if they will be ripe if I pick them if they are supposed to get bigger.  I don't know what type he planted.  Pointers, anyone?  I'd like to can some pickles too.

My okra is covered in ants.  I read that they don't harm the okra and that they do.  I'm confused.  I want my okra to make it.  If anything in that garden out there is mine, it's the okra.  I could survive on fried okra alone and never get tired of it. Want. Some. Now.

The tomato plants are HUGE.  They are so tall, but with no signs of tomatoes at all.  Maybe it's "a watched pot never boils" type thing, because I have been looking...everyday, several times a day.  Love fresh maters!

The watermelon plants are consuming the entire garden.  We thought we saw a watermelon last week, but can't find it now.  Maybe it wasn't.  I don't know.  I do know, we will have plenty of those as well.

Look at all our green :)

The Verdict is in!

I bought more loot today.  I think it's my goal to go to every Goodwill in every town I pass through.  I had to go to Lufkin today, so decided to stop in there.  I came out with a stash and wanting to go back in with some things I saw but didn't have room in my car for.  One was a wooden high chair.  It is totally what I want.  Another was a cast iron train set.  I did have room in my car for this, just not my buggy. : O  I'll be back.

I'll show pictures of all my stuff when I work on them.

Now, for the verdict:

At first I thought the only thing that was ruined from the flood was Morgan's dresser.  It's from Ikea, so it's particle board.  It saddens me, because it was still well built and very nice.  I fell in love with the size of the drawers and the drawers' frosted glass fronts.  I'm going to keep the drawers though and see if I can built another base around them.  It's hard to let that piece go.  No picture can do it justice, but here's a picture of it from Ikea's website:

It bothers me that this picture doesn't show what it truly looks like. 

Anyway, besides that being ruined, the carpet in all three bedrooms is also.  It wasn't that great to begin with, but it worked.  While Morgan is still in Dallas, the other girls and I are going to start ripping it up, starting tomorrow.  I know, you so want to be in my shoes.  Ripping up carpet isn't all that bad, but it is when it's wet and stinks up the entire house.  Not to mention, I can't stand touching wet carpet.  *shivers* (wet shoelaces do the same thing to me.)  YUCK!

I just want to make all this go away and go make something.

Better Day

The culprit

Well, that and a leaky valve. 

Last night was tough for me.  Even though the hose had busted, it wasn't the only problem.  The valve was leaking too, and by leaking, I really mean pouring.  Even though the valve was shut completely off, I had to stick a 5 gallon bucket under the sink to catch the water because I couldn't turn off the main water.  I had to stay awake to dump that bucket and it filled up about every 30 minutes.  I fell asleep this morning when Allison woke, and she took over. 

Forget waiting until Monday for the plumbers.  I called my Uncle Dudley and he came and fixed it for me.  Yay for Uncle Dudley!

Now, to suck up all the water in the carpets.  The chore isn't over yet.

In the meantime, I worked on one of my junking projects.

Would love to finish the rest, but I have water waiting to be dealt with. 



Such is Life

It is what it is.

For the past few days, the girls and I have been in Dallas.  We have a favorite hotel we stay always stay in while we are there.  It's just nice and clean with a lot of amenities at motel prices.  We did find out the hard way, though, that it's more expensive during the week than on weekends.  Go figure.  Still, it was a very comfortable stay, as always.

We planned to go to Reunion Tower, but it was closed for renovation.  No biggy.  Still loads of things to do.  We got there Wednesday night, so we just had our baths and crashed.  Thursday, we spent a lot of time running the roads trying to find a photo lab I had heard about that develops 120 film.  In the meantime, we stopped at Ritz in Plano, which is where Allison fell in love with a Diana F+ camera.  I've been wanting one too, so I got it for me her.  I've also been wanting a Fisheye 2 camera.  All I needed to hear were the words from Emily, "Mom, can I have a camera too?"  So, I bought me her the Fisheye 2. 

Ahhh, be still my heart.

We still had film to develop, so we pressed on to find that little hole in the wall of a lab.  On the OTHER side of Dallas.  Found it.  Dropped film off.  Pick up next day.  Yay!  Back to the hotel and time for some fun in the pool, pizza, and baseball.

The pizza here is something we look forward to.  It's delicious!  Always!

Later that night, we went for a walk in downtown Frisco.  We tried to get some shots, but we only a few turned out.  It was nice walking in the warm night air.

The film we had processed was from my Holga and here are a few sample shots.  We have a lot more, but since I didn't think to have them put on disc, I'm having to scan each and every one.  I'm loving it.

The bottom shot is an intentional double exposure of our basketball goal and our tubing raft.  Loving. 

We were going to go ahead and stay throughout the weekend, but I had a workshop to go to today in Conroe and something just didn't feel right about staying.  So, Friday evening, we left but took our time getting home.  Since we all had toy cameras, we would stop and just snap whenever we wanted to.  I'm seriously in love with the fisheye.  We had those developed today and did that old fashioned "oohing" and "ahhing" at the photo counter.  We can't remember exactly who took what, but here are a few examples of the Fisheye2. 

It's so much fun!

Once home, we crashed.

Then, this morning, we woke up to this...

Nevermind, I'm not even going to add pictures. 

Anyone who knows my  luck will know just what I'm about to say, I believe.  It has happened to me loads of times before.  I may have even mentioned the last time in this blog somewhere, I don't know.  I believe it is my destiny, Yep, you guessed it, to flood my house.

The very back bathroom in the house sprung a leak.  If you even want to call it a leak.  No, it sprung a waterfall under the sink.  I don't know how it did it overnight.  I can't even imagine it, but it did.  The cold water hose leading up to the faucet has a hole in it bigger than my forefinger.  I can actually stick my finger in it and move it from side to side.  It looks as if it's been chewed, but I don't have rodents.  Why me?  Why? 

Instead of losing my mind, I sat down and thought about what to do.  After a few thoughts and even a few tears,  Allison and I started moving furniture to the dry rooms of the house.  These dry rooms were my dining room, bedroom and laundry room.  That's it.  All three girls' rooms are flooded, the hallway, both back bathrooms, and the living room.  My bathroom and closet were flooded as well.  I'm guessing this is the reason I didn't have a good feeling about staying in Dallas throughout the weekend. 

So, cleaning it all is what we have done today, other than the short break we took to get the film developed and me writing this blog.  Needless to say, I didn't go to that workshop today.

I'm hanging in there, keeping calm.  It's not WHAT I go through, it's HOW I go through it. 

But, I am ready to move.