What were you for Halloween?

I dressed up as a handyman for Halloween.  Like an honest to goodness one as opposed to when I was a stud finder a few years ago. 

Yes folks, anyone can give their living room a facelift in one weekend if I can!  I’ve been wanting to replace my living room carpet for quite awhile.  No doubt this action will not please Finlay who has been working really hard to make this solid carpet a polka dot one instead…ahem. So that’s the before shot.  Just your generic beige carpet.  A couple of weeks ago I found out that my uncle (? ex-uncle? family friend?  not sure what to call him…) would be willing to come out to Calgary to help me install some flooring.  So I went on a hunt for the perfect flooring and put an order in.  I went for a really nice Pergo laminate that comes with underlay attached already.  Sure, it is more expensive, but by the time you add in the cost for purchasing separate underlay it evens out at the end of the day.  So Uncle A made it out to Calgary just after 4 pm on Saturday afternoon.  Once he got here we got to work pulling up the carpet and underlay, pulling the staples out of the floor and removing the base boards.  Luckily we were able to salvage the base boards to reuse once the new flooring was in.

Sunday morning was all about laying the floor and it actually went really quickly.  Since my room is pretty square it required minimal special cuts.  After that the baseboards were reinstalled, along with a new transition piece between the laminate and existing tile by the front door.

By 3 pm today we were all done!  I spent the rest of the evening reassembling the room and there we go…

This is actually phase one of the project.  I need to repaint the base boards and paint the walls.  Since my living room has a pretty high ceiling that will probably wait until the new year sometime while I figure out how to tackle it.

Sadly I missed out on seeing my niece as what I’m sure was the cutest little ladybug ever and handing out candy to all the trick or treaters, but such is life!  Hope you guys had a great weekend!