Kitchen Makeover in Progress: Flooring

Hi All,

Redoing my kitchen has been exhausting to say the least! Word to the wise, prepare your walls before your cabinets arrive. My husband kept saying he did not want to jump the gun and would do everything during his vacation. NOT! Here we are a month later still not even 1/2 done.

Sorry... I haven't written in so long because I'm constantly working on the kitchen, playing with my toddler who is whining constantly at this stage of her life, or checking on my mother. She has dementia and just turned 65 so I had to learn waaaaaaayyyy too much about Medicare!

One of our first projects involved pulling up the nasty nasty berber carpet in our living room. I found a steal of  a deal on some laminate flooring! We decided on laminate because it is hard to scratch and we have a Great Dane and Ella, our toddler. After weeks of begging and trying to convince Mr. Buzzkill that laminate was the way to go if we wanted to also be able to afford nice counters and appliances, he finally agreed to it. The search was on!!!! You won't believe me...but the floor we bought and is shown in the image above is about 76 cents/ sq ft and has foam backing already attached. It's super thick and has a 25 year warranty. I bought 48 boxes of it at Sam's Wholesale after Mr. Buzzkill read the reviews, looked at the stuff in person, and it passed our home test. There we were in Sam's clicking together a large hunk of floor to see if it looked realistic. I was thrilled when my husband actually thought it was pretty nice looking. The image above doesn't do it justice. Please ignore the painted splotch of green on far wall...I'm deep into the depths of color testing. This color is Martha S's Bay Leaf Green. Mr. Buzzkill gave it the thumbs down and said it looked like vomit. Agghhhh! I agree it is not good for an accent wall behind the couch...but I could see it in our kitchen. However, I think I've found something even better. I'll fill you in no another posting.

For the home test, we bought 2 boxes and assembled a hunkof floor in the kitchen. I invited my dog to play on it, I smashed banana into it, dropped random things (more detail in link to my review), and I stomped on it in some of my highest heels. (I won't even tell you what Mr. Buzzkill suggested we do on it!) Not a scuff...until I dropped a can opener from waist high...but we decided that would dent any floor and that we would be especially careful not to drop can openers on the floor. I was also able to disguise that particular dent extremely well using a stain marker I already had around the house.

For more in depth information, you can see my review of it at this link: http://hubpages.com/hub/Golden-Select-Laminate-Flooring-Review. For the price, it is an unbelievably attractive flooring option. I know it sounds hideous being this cheap and from Sams, but it is awesome!  I also have pictures of it at the above link. We have 1/2 the floor down in the kitchen as well as all of it down in the living room and it has performed beautifully thus far. Why just this morning, my Great Dane who is developing a fear of thunder came inside while it was storming. I put her in the back of the house because my daughter was eating. I didn't want her slobbering and begging for food. Ella also loves to throw her food as well. Suddenly Abbey jumped over the baby blocker (it's a homemade huge thing I made from 2 x 4s bc I could not find a gate with a right angle) and landed on the floor. I was sure a huge jump like that probably made dents or scratches of some kind. I quickly ran over to inspect and not a thing -except of course dirt and dust. I swear I am having a hard time keep the floor clean with all this construction going on in my kitchen. Plus, my dishwasher broke and I am not always putting my daughter in the highchair to eat. Shame on me. This is part of the reason the floor is looking dirty. I have been dust mopping, though, not every day. I plan to be all domesticated and enjoy my routine cleaning after this dam* kitchen is installed.

One more tip...as I may have said before, my husband doesn't like to R-E-A-D directions. After seeing the last cabinet install and how he put in the engineered wood flooring (before I knew him) I have been keeping a close eye on him. Hopefully, he won't ever read this blog. I guess since he doesn't read much besides financial news and play solitaire on the PC I don't have to be too worried. Anyhew....I do read adn I discovered that one should use a Japanese Handsaw to inexpensively cut the baseboard when you want your flooring to go under it. Did our previous flooring go under the baseboard? I think you can probably guess the answer to that one. NO! Well, I asked Mr. BK what saw we were going to use to cut the baseboard and he showed me. In retrospect it might have done the job...but I hightailed it to the Woodcraft store and bought myself a Japanese Woodsaw which I have read about alot in other woodworking books. It was about 25 dollars or so. It is really sharp and is used for making smooth cuts. It is also cool because it cuts on the backward pull instead of when you slide the saw forward like an American one. I'm stronger pulling back than I am pushing forward so I love this thing. Mr. BK and our friend we enlisted to help put down flooring with us for a few hours also grew to love it. You do have to watch that you don't saw into a nail though. I keep grabbing it up and doing Mr. Miagi moves with it while saying things like, "Ewwwwwaaaaachi WA!" and kicking my legs out alot. Mr. BK gets annoyed and also nervous I'm going to hurt myself when I do this.