Once the husband was done with all the building in the basement we just decided why not just finish it off and get the carpet. We have managed to pay cash for every little project in the basement but no way was paying cash for that much carpet in the cards. So knowing we were going to finance we just decided to do it now. Before being able to get carpet completed Nathan needed to get the laminate flooring put in place in the living room. FYI the carpet in our house was original to the house and was disgusting, here is one of the piles of dirt that was in the living room once the carpet and pad were ripped out. All total there were three of these piles just in the living room! Gross...
I don't have a really good picture of the laminate but here is one. It's pretty awesome! Laminate is in the living up to the kitchen and up to the three bedrooms so it's basically one room plus a little hallway. After a Saturday of frustrations Nathan finally got on a roll and finished it all up over a weekend. The color is a little off in the picture, it's more brown than it is red/orange. It is really nice to have a clean floor and something that will take abuse in a high traffic area. Bailey doesn't seem to like it to much though because she can't stop, but the new rug she really does like!
The laminate is 4" planks with a pad already on the bottom. Putting it in was a snap but there were a lot of cuts.
Once that was done it was time for the carpet guys to arrive. Tuesday and Wednesday after labor day we took off work on the installers from Lowes completed the three bedrooms upstairs and the whole basement. Nathan did the rip our and disposal himself which saved us around 300 dollars! I will say we were pretty impressed with Lowes. We only have a Home Depot in Lawrence but it really is the worst HD in the world. We really like HD but the one in Lawrence is just not up to par and if we were going to spend the money we were going to shop around. Lowes ended up having the best price on carpet and laminate. Customer service was awesome and the installer who is contracted with Lowes only does Lowes installments so we really felt like things were getting taken care of.
Carpet pad in front bedroom.
Close up of the carpet we picked out. It has just the right amount of speckles and really flows with the house.
We thought we were excited about the carpet but I think this little guy was more excited than we were. When we had it installed the only place he could be was the kitchen. He went crazy when it was in. He crawled all over the house a dozen times shaking his head and laughing. It was funny to watch. This is a picture of the basement in the corner you see when you walk down.
PROJECT - TV STAND
If you know my husband very well you know that he is very anti-"the man" and has been a big supporter of not having cable. I will say that we can watch almost everything we want with the setup he made for the past 4 years. With big 12 tv contracts changing last year he finally had enough and gave into the man. We now have cable... So all the KU games we will actually be able to watch instead of going to a restaurant. I thought he might mope around the house a few day since he lost his battle but he has actually embraced it and loves it.
With that in mind we already owned a surround sound system thanks to Nathan's parents for when they last moved. And we already had another TV but it was being used as the husbands ridiculously big computer monitor. So Nathan hung the tv and we were now in the market for a tv stand for all the electronics. We really love older furniture and what people will do to them on Pinterest so we decided to give one a shot.
Here is the dresser we bought. Found it on Craigslist.
Once we got it home Nathan sanded it, took some measurements, and got some plywood for shelving. In the picture below he took out the two long drawers and put in plywood for a shelf. He did the same thing for the bottom and then put in a divider for support. This picture was taken after he sanded it for a while. Overall the dresser was in pretty good condition.
The drawers have some really good detail. They are curved and come out from the main dresser a little.
Once he got it all sanded we both painted the insides and all around with a quart of cream paint from home depot. On the top Nathan lightly sanded the original surface and then went over it twice with a maple stain and poly in one. The top looks awesome!
Here is what the final product looks like. Drilled some holes for cables and spray painted some handles we got at the restore. The white paint has a nice streak look and we went over it with a stain to, to make it look a little more aged.
As you can see on the side I also went over some spots with some 60 grit sandpaper to give it a distressed look.
Overall this was one of the more fun projects we have had in a while. We really like the stand and it didn't break the bank and it doesn't look store bought. Here is the price breakdown.
Dresser off craigslist - $50
Quart of paint - $12
New knobs from restore - $2
Shelving wood - $15
We already had the stain so I didn't add that in and we didn't have to use much. We are already onto the next project! We bought to 5 panel solid doors this weekend and we are making a coffee table and a desk out of them. Pictures and final product coming soon!
