Some of you may have seen it through our Insta-stories, but huuuge progress was made in our kitchen this past week! For the first time in the 6 weeks since our dishwasher flooded, we now have a kitchen floor again! Would you believe this lovely Carrara marble-looking floor is vinyl?! Now we can walk around in bare feet or socks again (until the next project starts, hehe. #livinginafixerupper).
The weekend before the floor was installed, we also finally got out our paint brushes and rollers for our sickly-green kitchen walls and painted them the same color as our dining room – BM’s Dove White OC-17, which I’m rather in love with. I have come a long way from the girl that was determined not to go with white for a wall paint color. Would this be considered decorating “growing pains”?
Here’s some more “before” pictures of the floor after the previous peel-and-stick thin tiles were removed:
When the rest of the tiles were removed, they revealed that 80% of the floor looked like this! Accckk!
Why such big screws? Nails and staples everywhere. Deep grooves and pits. Why?!
Calming down now.
It took two days to get the flooring finished. Here it is starting to look pretty after the first day of work:
This was our floor after the next day, fully finished!
We were a bit unsure about having tile that was rectangular versus square, but I can honestly say we love it! Having no grout lines really enhances the overall look (and helps when cleaning), and the marble veining looks very legit. We didn’t expect to have new floors this soon, but now that we have something more to our own style and a quality product, we’ve realized what a huge difference in makes for us! Now each time we are in the kitchen it feels so lovely to be in it and makes us feel like we’ve claimed back another room in our home. So so so happy with our new floors!
Oh! And check out our laundry/mudroom’s new floor! The kitchen floor used to run into this room as well, so we were able to replace it too. We decided to go with another vinyl to help break up the rooms, and we’re happy with our choice! The gray of this floor perfectly picks up the soft gray veins in the neighboring marble kitchen floor.
Now…the story of the unexpected hole-in-the-wall that happened when we were prepping for the floor installation, hehe.
Let me pull out my Dwight Schrute from The Office here…Fact: There’s always going to be surprises when you’re renovating a fixer upper.
Exhibit A: We had cheap cabinets against the wall fashioned by the infamous previous homeowner.
We wanted to replace them, so we decided to take them out so the new floor would be installed underneath.
We unscrewed them.
And yet the cabinets wouldn’t budge.
“Are we missing screws?”
After double-checking to find that yes, all the screws were indeed out, Karl gave some mighty strong tugs to the cabinet and…it cracked along the back.
Turns out, the back of the cabinet was not only screwed in, but glued.
It gets better.
With the cabinets now cracked and lost to us (we weren’t very sorry), Karl went into full-on demolition mode and we found…the bottom half of the wall was missing.
Yup. The back of the cabinets WERE THE WALL.
They had been GLUED TO THE EXPOSED STUDS.
Who does that?!
Oh, right. The same guy who slathered car putty on the wood floors, drilled a pipe through the floor for his beloved TV, track lights in the vestibule, and used plywood behind the drywall.
Told ya he was infamous in our household.
In summary, we have a beautiful kitchen floor and freshly painted walls…and a gaping open wall we did not expect to need to close. Huzzuh. But I guess this would be a good time to run some electrical? #snowballeffect
Those pretty first-stage plans for the kitchen will have to wait just a little bit longer to be realized. But hey. that’s what living in an old house that’s a fixer upper is all about, right? Having crazy renovation stories like this is what makes life great, and the satisfaction all the bigger when you see your vision for your home realized. :)
Any good renovation stories of your own to share?
Floor Product Used: the flooring is Adura Max 12×24 Luxury Vinyl Tile in Legacy.
2 Comments
I take back my complaints about the previous homeowners of my house.
What did they do to that floor?! WHY?!
The new floor looks amazing!
Hi Madeline, and thanks! You should see what the previous owner did to our master bedroom floor! (though we were miraculously able to save that one). And I dunno, your home having drywall over your plaster is a raw deal too. Bottom line: we can commiserate about the need to give a good slap to our previous home owners. ;)