The state of the downstairs is starting to really get to us so we are pushing ahead with the flooring installation. Lucky for us we got our hands on a bunch of laminate flooring for free that we can use in the meantime for the hallway and guestroom. We are also measuring for an order of large format porcelain floor tiles for the main area and laundry room. We started in the install of laminate in the hallway and its going ok so far… though not having click together flooring may cost me my sanity.

The renovation continues at my family cabin as well, and Dad wants to replace the laminate flooring we installed a number of years ago on the main level. The flooring is a glue together (not click) plastic laminate in a light colour that we put in place without bothering to glue, so removing it was super easy and in an hour I had single handedly stacked all the pieces into 4 piles. We then had to move it all to the truck, then into the boat, then into our car, then down into the backyard by the lower door. The things we do for free repurposed flooring!

There’s a good amount of it! We started by ripping out the last of the carpet from the hallway and guest room downstairs, leaving the underlay in place. The carpet we removed will be used to line the bottom of our planters outside to prevent weed growth.

We also decided to take out the baseboards and door casings because they had been chewed by bunnies… le sigh. It also made it easier to install the flooring without having to cut a bunch of notches. We also removed the temporary bookshelf J built last year using the shelves removed from the pantry when we gave it the facelift.

Making progress… this laminate is pretty tricky to install, every time I place a new board down it shifts the other ones and I am constantly having to press them back together to close the cracks. It won’t be 100% perfect but we will do the best we can. Once we get the baseboards back in it will look much better! We are going for a 6″ flat white base instead of the 4″ we removed, plus we will also paint the doors and jambs white and add a new wider door casing on the 3 doors in this hallway (also in white). I have a grey curtain ready to go for the closet at the end of the hall, and will source a new bookshelf to replace the makeshift one we had all the cooking and design books stored on. Progress!