We tried...

We really did. Remember, from this post, when we took down the wall between our dining room and our living room (you can see the very small strip on the floor in the new opening)? Well, we knew that we wanted to pull the carpet up in the dining room and also the tile in the entry...one day, at least. "Not now" we said to each other, after all, the holidays were right around the corner.

And then we couldn't leave well enough alone. Before we knew it, we pulled up the carpet in our dining room and then we wanted to see what the floor would look like under the tile. Pulling up one little-bitty tile wasn't going to hurt right?

Sure it won't...and soon the tile entry was pulled up (my back, knees and hands now all feel like they are 80 plus years old and I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome in both my hands). Well, we thought, how about pulling up part of the carpet that's on the living room side, that way the carpet won't get dirty as much when you walk up and down the stairs to the kitchen and if you were walking back and forth between the entry and the kitchen?

So up came that carpet. Then, due to our consumption of alcohol while pulling up the carpet and tile and the delirium that overtook our bodies, we thought, wouldn't it be great to pull up the laminate wood flooring in the kitchen, you know, just to get an idea for what that would look like?

People, we are stupid...we have no concept of "leave well enough alone".

We rented an industrial grinder and we began the tedious task of grinding down the concrete to look even and feel smooth. If you will recall from this post, you will remember that our goal, ONE DAY, was to have bare concrete floors that we were planning on sealing...to give a more urban "loft" look. I spent 5 days grinding a 5 ft. x 5 ft. section and still didn't like the results.

So after much debating and feeling defeated (if you know Jason and I, you know we don't like defeat), we decided that our time was WAY more important than our money so we called in the professionals last Monday. Jason harassed the poor concrete guy over many voicemails begging and pleading with him to see if someone could come out THAT week to give us a quote. Wednesday rolled around and we had somebody out giving us our quote. They proceeded to tell us that it would be about 2 weeks before they could come out. That wasn't going to do, "Thanksgiving is next week," I pathetically say to the lady, "Is there anyway the guys could come out this week (mind you this is Wednesday), over the weekend, or even at the beginning of next week?" Well she said her guys might want to work over the weekend since they didn't get paid for the Thanksgiving break. Which leads me to....



TODAY! This is what my downstairs looked like at 8:00am. Did I mention that we thought "What the hell! We might as well pull up the living room carpet!" and now that is gone as well? It's Saturday and, yeah (say that like Lundberg from Office Space), I'm hosting Thanksgiving at my house in 5 days for about 12 people!!!! Luckily, we were able to get the concrete people out and as of right this moment at 10:21am on Saturday before Thanksgiving, they are happily grinding away!!

Here is what a close-up of my bare concrete floors look like right now. I'll take an "after" picture around the same spot once it has been grinded, sealed and waxed...you'll be amazed!

They said they might be COMPLETELY done with the grinding, cleaning, sealing and waxing by tomorrow!! And then I can move all my furniture back in by Monday or Tuesday...just in the nick of time. Speaking of furniture, my bedroom now contains 2 couches, 2 dining tables, my bed, my humongous TV and all the laundry that I have failed to put away for the last 3 weeks. My upstairs guest room has 8 dining chairs, art, mirrors, drapes and all the other crap that was already residing in this forgotten room.

Oh yeah, we also had to move our fridge (which was a joke that I wanted to cry about...more on that another time, I'm still fuming from the accident that my beloved fridge got into) and our washer and dryer is living in the garage right now.

I'm a positive realist about things. Things are really just black or white to me (thus the extreme nature I reported in this post about myself) and while I can think very realistic about things, I also know that there is always a solution (at least if I'm the only one that thinks so...even if that solution fails!) which makes me positive. So one good thing that's coming from all this chaos is that my house is going to be VERY clean when everything gets put back in place for Thanksgiving! Never mind that I really need to start shopping and preparing a few things in advance for Turkey Day, never mind that I have been wanting to put up my Christmas tree for the past few weeks but haven't been able to and never mind that my poor child will not have slept in his own house in almost a week (the dust is horrible!)...I'm just happy that others are doing the back-breaking work for us and will have it done in two days!

Alright I'm out like a light...I've got dust fumes to inhale and high-pitch grinding to listen to? What will you be doing on this November fall day?