Hubby and I had quite the last minute project fall into our laps, which is why I have been away for a bit. My darling dog decided to chew a pretty good sized hole in the carpet, right under where my husbands computer chair sat. We really had no choice but to do something about it.

Now, my husband and I are a truly amazing team. We are in sync in our thought processes 99% of the time. That being said, we tend to bite off more than we can chew when it comes to “small projects” We had figured that we could move everything out of the office, and rip up the carpet, throw a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and be ready for our dinner guests to come over in 3 days.

Yeah…. about that…

So, like everything we tend to do with the house, one project will bring to light 5 others in the process. I for one seriously underestimated how long it would take for us to clear out the room to rip up the floor. I also underestimated how dead tired I would be doing the work.

Here’s the before.

Once we pulled everything out of the room, it was time to rip up the carpet. I knew that it would be bad. After an elderly dog with bladder problems, a puppy that took way to long to house train, and another dog that is incredibly spiteful, the floors were bound to be a disaster. That’s not counting whatever the people that lived here before us did too. The carpet came up really easily. Nothing a sharp carpet knife and some muscle couldn’t handle. The carpet pad was more difficult. It was old and in bad shape, and just disintegrated in places. We got it all rolled up and out of the house, then had to deal with the damage to the sub floor. Carpets are great. They keep your feet warm, the muffle sounds, and can look awesome. Carpets are not great if you have pets. If there is an accident, and you don’t get to it IMMEDIATELY, the carpet and pad just act like sponge, and keep the wetness hostage, no matter what you do. Our floor was no exemption. You could clearly see where the popular puppy spots were. The floor had bubbled in some areas, and there was some mold in others. It was kind of scary to be honest. I cleaned up the best I could, and bought some Killz. I had always heard that this stuff would act as a barrier for pet odors, so decided to give it a shot.

HIT IT WITH THE KILLZ.

This stuff STINKS! I had to open the windows and wear a ventilation mask. I still got a little light headed. It went on really easily though. I used two quarts to cover the middle of the room, using two coats. It dried really fast, and we were able to get in and paint the walls 2 hours after the final coat went on. I was amazed at the change in the smell already.

Underlayment!

After the paint was up, it was time for the dreaded floor. I had a bad experience with laminate floors when we did our kitchen. I was dreading this next step. Thanks to a great sale, and having what we liked in stock, we decided to go with Pergo. It was a much higher quality product than what we had used before, and they advertise that they are excellent for pets. It was considerably more expensive than the other stuff, but from the research that we did, it was going to be worth it. Lets hope so.

Our Choice.

Progress!

Thanks to the same great sale, we were able to come home with a table saw as well, which was going to make this process much easier than the last time we attempted it. ( we cut everything with a jig saw and a dremmel. I would not recommend this…) The room is a rectangle, so at least there wouldn’t be any really weird cuts to be made. I learned my lesson from the last time we did the floor, and decided to take off all the floor trim to alleviate any gaps in the floor at the edges. This was a bit of a pain, but I’m really happy we did it in the end. The floor is always difficult to start because its floating, but after we got a rhythm going, it went really smoothly. This stuff was SO MUCH EASIER to lay than the cheap stuff. It was much less painful than I had originally anticipated. After the floor was done, I replaced the trim ( that also had a fresh coat of paint) and caulked the top of the trim where it met the wall. I didn’t want to do this step, but Matt was insistent, and I’m so glad he was. I was really not confident in my ability to make a clean caulk line, but it worked out really well, and made it look so much more polished overall.

FINISHED! (Sort of…)

Now that the construction part was done, it was time to move the furniture back in! Matt got a new desk, and we agreed that it would be best to reorganize how the room was laid out. He was in charge of building the monster of a desk, and let me tell you… it took HOURS. I would never have been able to do what he did, but hes so good with stuff like that. He says its like against puzzle. I’m terrible at puzzles… My job was to rewire the office. Cable management is something I have a love hate relationship with. It can be such a royal pain, but makes life much easier when its done, plus it looks so much better without a giant rats nest of cables stuck behind a desk. My secret here are thin Velcro straps. They are reusable, and do an amazing job of keeping everything together neatly. We got some bookcases, and some storage bins, and proceeded to move everything back in in a manner that made sense. I made a promise that I would be more conscious of the art I hung on the walls from this point on, and so now we are struggling a little bit with what to put where.

The After. <3

All in all I am over the moon happy with how it turned out. We learned a lot during the whole process, and I’m glad we decided to do everything that we did. Timing was certainly not ideal, and it was a huge hit to the bank account that we were not anticipating that’s for sure. But in life you have to take things as they come. Stressing about it wont do any good.

At least multiple trips to the store means getting the chance to run into cuties like this. <3