Weekend Recap

How was your weekend? Mine, for the most part, was great. I started it off with a bang - very sick on Friday and home from work (more on that later).

Saturday I started to feel better and slowly cleaned our house from top to bottom - kitchen, bathroom, dusting, floors, I vacuumed the floors and furniture and our roman shades in the living room too! Matt took Bella to the vet (she was breathing funny and needed a wellness check/shots - she was ok, she just has seasonal allergies!) and then we ate lunch and watched UNC vs. Clemson. Thank goodness UNC won - it was a close game until the end!

Via

 Then we headed over to Lumber Liquidators to look at laminate hardwoods.

Side bar: Our entire home has wall to wall carpet - and not NICE wall to wall carpet - it's the cheapest stuff you can buy.  See below:

Our living/dining room. Note ugly carpet. ;)

Another view. You can see the new doorway to our kitchen next to the fireplace - hence the white sheetrock.

When we purchased our home four years ago, at the height of the housing boom, we bought it from a "flipper" who ran out of cash and instead of putting in at least a medium grade carpet, he opted for cheapy-cheapy. Of course we found out soon enough that there were hardwoods under the cheapy-cheapy but were unsure what condition they were in. We too ran out of cash when we moved in as we had to complete the kitchen (only 1/2 of it was done), add some much needed items to the bathroom - like an actual cabinet - and purchase a washer/dryer, dishwasher, fold down attic stairs, paint the whole house and replace the windows. Needless to say the floors were the least of our worries.

But when we pulled up the carpet in Baby M's room this past winter, I assumed that the hardwoods in the most high traffic area of our home wouldn't nearly be as nice. But I digress...

Under that assumption of crap hardwoods in our living/dining, we headed to Lumber Liquidators to look at laminate wood floors (we can't afford the real stuff, plus our home is not valued enough to merit them). They had some great options of 8mm and 10mm for less than $2 sq/ft. We brought home a sample of one we liked and on the way home, Matt asks, "What if we pull up the carpet and the hardwoods are just as good as the ones in the nursery?" How did we never think that was a possibility?! Anyways, we get home and Matt starts pulling up the carpet in the dining area (it's one large, long room) - AND GUESS WHAT? They are just as good as the floors in Baby M's room!

(Insert lots of loud cheering, high fives and "woo's")

So we spent the next hour pulling up all of the carpet in the whole room, yanking out the tack boards along the edge of the wall and pulling up staples from the floor with pliers.

It's a miracle! Nice hardwood floors! Notice the new doorframe to the kitchen - it was off center from the galley so Matt moved it and widened it - in one day!

Another view, gotta love our fisheye lens.

Halfway done...

Carpet out! Yippee! Now onto pulling up the tacks, staples and cleaning it!

Obviously we are not going to leave the floors looking like this - we decided to sand, stain and poly them. I also voiced to Matt last night that since we're not paying for laminate floors now, why don't we hire a professional floor refinisher to do the work for us? He agreed! 

After pulling up the carpet and staples, we took a break and headed to a impromptu dinner with friends - Jessie, Mark and their sweet kiddos Noah and Sparrow, David, Lorean and their daughter Micah, Dan, and Joseph and Caitlin.

The firstborn Mathis - Noah Fox.

Blurry Sparrow. I'm still mastering the art of manual focus and light.

Micah, who learned to sit up recently! Precious!

We ate sushi then headed over to Mark and Jessie's house where we hung on their back deck around their fire pit, made s'mores (I didn't have any per Lent) and talked about anything and everything. At one point during the night, I said aloud during a lull in conversation, "I love this! I love you guys!" and everyone started echoing how awesome it was to just have some fun with friends.

Sunday - I slept in (missing church, boo) and Matt went snowboarding with our friend David T. I did a little work since I was out Friday, searched for floor refinishers and caught up on some blog reading. It was a 70 degree day so I spent some of it outside with a book, drinking coffee with sugar free creamer (yuck). Giving up sugar is hard!  Also, UNC played Duke for the ACC title that afternoon and I watched most of the game. Sadly we lost the Then Matt and I went over to our friends Beth and Paul's house for a cookout.

Overall, a great weekend. Minus the Friday sickness of course. More pictures of the living/dining room floor remodel to come!


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