Before and Afters of wood floor install

As any do it yourselfer knows, each home improvement project comes with it's own surprises...twists and turns you might say. We hired my uncle from MN to come down and help us minimize some of those surprises with his re-modeling expertise, and he was so helpful. Not only did he have the know-how, he had the brawn as well. We started by pulling up the carpet in the master bedroom. I was glad to see it go...

First surprise, the padding was GLUED down as well as stapled. Which added time to prep work, we had to scrape padding that was stuck to the floor as well as pulling staples. Another road bump, was a small area of vinyl that was very stubborn at coming up. My DH's solution... a heat gun and a scraper. The boys got that up toot-sweet and we were ready to roll.

The bulk of the flooring was pretty strait forward, glue, plank, pound in place, and move on. It's the areas around the walls and closets and doorways that takes so much time. But Uncle D has pride in his work, and it was done RIGHT.

Now for the before and after pics. Below is before with the carpet. Not so bad in the pic, but definitely stained and smelly, and as I see now, it lacked color and depth.

And now, it's all clean and purdy. I like the contrast the wood ads as well as the warmth and depth. I don't think I'll ever install wall-to-wall carpeting in a house again. (note the new lamps as well)

The stairs had been carpeted in this house and so that had to go as well. The stairs were tricky, but Uncle D got it done beautifully with new oak treads that we stained to match the existing wood in the floors. He even rounded that bottom one, like it was before.

There were lots of other honey-do's that became uncle-do's while he was here, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I still have work, I need to paint the areas he repaired, and do some clean up, but we have plenty of time for that.

Here's wishing you luck with all of your home improvement projects coming up.

Margo and the demo team!!!!!