tile to laminate: our first big house project

On Saturday we accomplished our first big makeover on our home. Everything else we've done, like peel wall paper and paint has been fairly low-key in comparison. On Saturday Ben and 3 other guys tore up our tile flooring in the dining room + kitchen to replace it with laminate wood flooring to match the rest of our house. We've been wanting to do this since we bought the place 18 months ago.

Reasons we hated the tile:

• First, it was just plain ugly. 
• It was super unforgiving when it came to dropping dishes or little ones falling.
• It was installed incorrectly (which made removal easier) so it had many cracks.
• Grout is disgusting and annoying to clean. 
• It broke up the main living space of our already small home, making it look smaller.
• It was cold and uninviting.
• I could think of a thousand other reasons...

Needless to say I was a bit jealous that I didn't get to take a crack at it with a hammer along with the guys. Ben said they all had a lot of fun with the demolition. Malakai and I went to my parents' place to hang out for the day to stay out of the way and to avoid inhaling tile + saw dust. 

Thankfully it was also easy to get up, it only took an hour. Apparently the tile was heavily glued to the previous linoleum floor so it all came up together to reveal the subfloor.

Then came work on the underlayment and laminate flooring. 

{my husband hard at work}

The biggest reason this project has taken so long to get to (besides time + money) was finding the right floor to match the existing laminate that we have in the rest of our house. We found something REALLY close right away but I was determined to exhaust all our options for a perfect match before settling. We went back to the original match and it turned out great. 

While finishing up the trim Ben's dad and brother also replaced the door from the dining room to the garage. This happened to be our Christmas present from his parents last year, but we had to redo the flooring before it could work. Neither of these pictures show that, but it looks great!

{the finished product!}

After being out of the house since 7:30 that morning and only a 45 minute nap for Malakai after driving him to sleep, I got to come home at about 6pm and see the finished product. It was like walking into someone else's home. Really it was such a funny feeling to leave with the house fairly in tact and come back with it looking completely different. What a blessing to not have to worry about any of the construction and mess and just come home to something new and beautiful!

Here's a direct comparison. The angles of the photos aren't a perfect match, but you get the idea.

Thank you so much to my father-in-law, brother-in-law David, and our friends Brad and Jacob (and their wives) for giving up a significant portion of your Saturday to work on our house and make it more of a home for us as we prepare to welcome little brother!