Next big change

Before Christmas, DH was at Sears buying some tools for some home/car repair and was accosted by a Sears employee offering a free estimate on a home project. Ever since we moved into our house 7 1/2 years ago, we have been talking/dreaming about pulling out the carpet in the living room and putting in a wood floor. A big part of our dilemma has been whether to also rip out the tile in the kitchen to extend the wood into there as well. So DH told the Sears employee that we might be interested in getting an estimate on having a wood floor installed. She also gave DH a coupon for 15% off any flooring work done. Later that evening I got a call from Sears to set up an appointment to have an estimate done. We set the appointment for the evening of December 15th. We wanted to wait until all of the Sounds of the Season rehearsals & concerts were over.

So on the evening of the 15th, two project consultants came to our house and were here for way too long! Probably close to 3 hours. In the end, with a lot of discounts that were offered, we decided to let Sears install a wood floor in our living room. If we end up wanting to have the wood continued into the kitchen after we see how it wears, we can have Sears do it for the same discounted prices that we had the living room installed for - provided we do it within 12 months of the completion of the living room project. We decided to go with a hardwood instead of a laminate or engineered hardwood and we decided on hickory in a nice medium brown color that coordinated well with our piano and kitchen cabinets. (At first we were drawn to one of the maple colors, but it was almost the exact same color as our piano and cabinets and would have been way too much of the same color in the room.)

A couple of days later we had the installers from Sears come and measure our living room so they could get the materials ordered. Then a couple of days after that I got a call from our Project Coordinator saying that the materials were in and we could have the floor installed anytime! (Now remember that this is all before Christmas and right in the middle of moving around all of the bedrooms in the house and dealing with the mice issue as well...) I told the Project Coordinator that we definitely wanted to wait until after Christmas and probably after New Years as well - for one thing we had our Christmas tree setup in the living room this year and I wasn't going to be ready to take down all of the Christmas decorations yet.

So the week after Christmas I got a call from the Project Coordinator again asking if we could setup a date the first week of January. I called him back the Tuesday after New Years and had to leave a message with him. He returned my call on Wednesday and I said that we could have it installed anytime - as long as it wasn't over a Tuesday (I have cub scouts in my home on Tuesdays and I didn't want the house a mess with them here). So the coordinator asked if they could come and start the project the next day (Thursday)! It was going to take 2 days and apparently work is a little slow this time of year. Since we had already paid a portion for the floor and I did manage to take down the tree and most of the Christmas decorations on Monday I agreed. He then said that the workers would need to bring the materials over to the house that day so that they would be at room temperature when they came the next day to start the installation. That meant that I had to do some serious cleaning and organizing so that we could get all of the furniture moved out of the living room - with the big items being our couch, love seat and piano! I also had to move out everything from the front closet, everything from the top of the piano as well as move the piano bench and all the music in the room. I had to organize and clean out a bunch of stuff in my bedroom so we could move one of the couches in there, move the table and chairs around in the kitchen so we would have room to move the piano in there, and then make room for the other couch in the family room. In addition to this it was also my nephew's first birthday and we had been invited over to their house that evening for dinner and birthday cake. I also managed to find time to cut Luke's hair (it was looking way too shaggy) and I also gave Kay her first haircut (her hair had a bunch of long, scraggly sections in the back that I wanted to even out with the front of her hair - it looks super cute now).

I saved the big furniture for DH to help me move, but I still had to make room in the living room for the workers to put all of the wood. They came in the early afternoon with the materials and Kay thought it was a lot of fun to play on: