The Joy of New Construction

Now that we are fully invested in our home remodel and into our 3rd week on the job, the home is starting to come together. In some rooms I have already attached trim and painted the walls. I am going with subtle sage/gray/greens in the living areas, and yellow in the kitchen. We are trying to do most of the work ourselves since we had to sub out the electrical, plumbing, cabinets and new windows. Those four areas alone have cost more than I ever expected to spend while remodeling a home. So, we have resigned to doing all the framing, dry walling, mudding, finish carpentry, and tiling.

One area that we debated on is the wood floors. The wood floors were in really poor condition and in the bedroom, the floors were unsalavageable. In the living room we are going to lay carpet on top, so that leaves the dining room, entry hall and office in wood. If we finished the floors ourselves, they most likely would not look as good as if done professionally, plus, because we moved walls, there are many gaps in the wood floors that would need to be repaired and look seamless....I am not to sure that we could do that. After long debate over the cost of having a professional do the floors, we agreed and got bids. The best bid came from Sokol Flooring. They came two days later. In just one day they seamlessly patched the open areas, sanded down the entire floor and then laid wood filler. The next day they came in and stained and then later on left a poly coat on the floor. We were told just to stay off the floors for 24 hours while the poly coat hardened and set!!! I was totally impressed with how fast they worked and the quality of the work. If I had be cursing earlier for having spent the money on the wood refinish, I wasn't cursing after I saw the finished product! The floors are absolutely magnificant!






This picture was taken one minute before the BEATING!!!

ok, now seriously, if you tell a kid, "hey don't walk on the floors and stay out of the house," OF COURSE, they are going to walk right on the newly poly coated wood floors and then double back so there are multiple sets of foot tracks through the newly finished floors! When I called the wood floor guys to come look, he simply said, "well, I guess it's like when you lay new concrete, your kids always have to leave a pemanent mark." Needless to say, the word 'devestation' does not nearly describe the pit I felt in my stomach after paying the bill for the wood floors and seeing the mark of my child on them!