Through Hell to Get to Heaven.

If there's one thing you can say about Darrick and I, it's that we sure know how to celebrate time off together. Last fall, I took the week of his fall break off and we ripped out our saltillo tile and refinished the concrete.

The big problem here? The sales person who helped us pick the finish for our floors advised that we get a product we pretty much ended up hating. I mean, it looked pretty fresh and light and breezy when we first did it, but there were some serious issues here. First, the product we were sold to fill in holes and divits was useless. Rather than filling them flush with the floor's surface, it created 'bubbles' inside the holes that looked super tacky. Second, the surface of this floor is not dog-and-kid friendly. Dirt gets on it and never seems to come off of it. Nothing short of scouring it on hands and knees with soap and a scrub brush will lift the dirt, and who has time for that? Third, without something on top of the concrete, the baseboards didn't fit back in place right, meaning we never finished freshining them up and re-attaching them to the walls.

So, in short, we have: uneven floor with weird holes in it that are filled with bubbles, dirt that won't ever be fully removed, and missing baseboards. Nice, right?

We decided this 3 day weekend was our perfect opportunity to go up north and get out of the heat. And then, we got sidetracked and ended up cancelling our hotel reservations and spending 7 hours today installing laminate flooring in our kitchen. It took much longer than we'd expected and was tedious and tiring, but the kitchen floor looks so good you could kiss it! At some point today, we had to run to Home Depot to get a tool to help us install the edges and corners, and decided on a whim to buy MORE flooring so we can extend this into the dining room this weekend, and eventually into the great room as well. In my perfect world, our front room (aka the catch-all play/exercise room) will get done at some point too, but probably not for awhile.

It's not how everyone would spend their weekend, but once you see the pictures I think you'll understand why I'm more than happy to spend ours installing floors.

For now, a sneak peek:

Did I mention it was 118 today in Chandler, and we sweated our butts off?

We made a decision today, too, to not put the shitty old stove back in there. Since we had to pull it out all the way to get in the floors, and since it is completely crappy, we're kicking it to the curb and buying a new stove in a stainless finish. We eat at home far more than we used to these days partly because of cost, partly because of health, and partly because Rohan acts like one of those kids in restaurants most of the time. So a new stove is a non-negotiable.

I'll have a ton more pictures to share soon!