New kitchen floor!

We've owned our house for 6 years now, which is just crazy to think that much time has passed.  But anyway, when we got it, it was a foreclosure that had been a bit neglected.  And by neglected, I mean that they left their cat in the house when they left and it destroyed the carpets.  The 4 boys that lived there put bb gun holes in the walls among other things.  So though we got a great deal, we had a lot of work to do!

We've also slowly updated a few things here and there. The kitchen floor when we moved in looked nice.  It had the look of dark hardwood even though we knew it was just laminate.  And though it was in good shape, it was cheap flooring.  It just seemed that year after year the finish on the floor was wearing.  And as we added our boys to our family the amount of crumbs on our floor immensely increased.  And the dark floor showed every.single.one.  You had to hand wash it in order to have it look clean, and then, it still looked dirty a few hours later.

For this busy mama, it was frustrating to say the least.

(this is an older picture, but I forgot to take one before we started demo.  You can see that it looks nice, it just wasn't practical or good quality.  Peter said it was like particle board when he was ripping it up)

We had talked about new flooring and we finally felt like we had a bit of extra money to get them replaced.  We talked to our local flooring company (who did our carpets) and he recommended that rather than spend so much money on tile (what we originally had thought of putting in), that we get a really nice, quality vinyl.  It just made sense to find something easy to clean, durable, and financially fit our price range of house.  So we searched their store and found one that fit my qualifications of "doesn't show every single crumb, durable and easy to clean"  And with Peter doing almost all of the labor/hard work beforehand, we'd save a ton of money on those costs.

We placed our order and wouldn't you know it, it was due to come in right when we were due with Ethan!  They asked if they could install it on August 6th-8th.  We were due with our 3rd baby on August 1st.  Now most people would think it was cray cray to have new flooring installed at the same time you're having a baby, but we thought it'd work for a few reasons.
1)  Peter was going to have time off work to help with demo since he was taking time off for the baby
2)  we thought we might be in the hospital at that time so then the flooring installation wouldn't bother us at all since we wouldn't even be there
3)  if we were going to be home, our sweet church friends were going to be bringing us food for at least a week after Ethan was born so we wouldn't even need our oven!

Perfect timing right?

And it was.

Ethan was born August 1st.  Peter had done all the demo prior to him being born.  Our friend helped move our appliances to our garage on August 5th.  And though the flooring installation was delayed, it went quickly once they started and we were allowed to walk on it shortly afterward.

With our friends bringing us dinner, we only needed a microwave for leftovers, we could eat outside since it was summer, and we got used to our refrigerator being in the garage.  The only minor challenge was not having laundry for about 5 or 6 days (which really piles up with a family of 5!)

Granted, I was super duper happy to have everything back in its place the next week, but overall, it went really smoothly.

And the best part is that I love the floor.  Crumbs are hardly noticeable.  It's so easy to mop.  It's super soft.  It looks like tile without any grout maintenance.  And I love the color.

(I will have to update this post with better pictures....my camera lens isn't working so I have to use my 'zoom' lens and I can't get good pictures)

I make sure to tell Peter many times that I love it and thank him for indulging his little wifey :-)  I'd better wrap up this post so I can go hand wash my floor.  Wait, no....not needed anymore.  Busy mama of 3 boys with new flooring = happy happy happy!