The best Christmas ever . . . a new floor and a new stove!

As you probably know from an earlier post, Greg and I took the plunge and replaced the ceramic tile in our main floor with hardwood as our major Christmas present this year. The actual tear up and installation of the new floor was a 3-day effort (not including clearing the area and cleaning up). This 3-day process started Tuesday, 12/16, right after we returned from Melanie's graduation festivies in Columbus!

If you are also a reader of Emily's blog, you also know that I returned to Pittsburgh on Monday afternoon with a bucket on my lap . . . . All I had had to eat for 36 hours when the installers arrived Tuesday morning was a bowl of mashed potatoes and 3 glasses of water. Luckily, I had arranged to work from home Tuesday and Wednesday to be here while the workers were here. This actually saved me a sick day from work, because I could not have gone in Tuesday. However, I was able to sit in the glider in the master bedroom with my laptop and participate in conference calls and answer e-mail and generally be productive. I digress as usual.

I went downstairs and took pictures every few hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, and herein I provide a short pictorial record of our project with the BEAUTIFUL RESULTS!!! It is truly amazing. And the new stove isn't too shabby either. I am sooooo happy.

This is Dave and Billy at the beginning of the tear out of the ceramic tile. That pole Billy is holding is like a steel ramrod; it weighs about 25 pounds.

This is the corner where the refrigerator sits. The sub-floor was water damaged, and the baseboards were screwed into the wall in this corner. Ken didn't say any bad words, but he was muttering when he tore this out.

Here Dave and Billy are sweeping up the layer of sub-floor and getting ready to lay the 1/2-inch plywood that was put down to replace the tile and the layer they took up. This brought the floor to the same height with the hardwood as the previous surface. This made the transitions to other rooms work the same as before.

Once the 1/2-inch plywood was down, Dave and Kenny opened the boxes of the flooring material and started piecing the puzzle together. (Billy didn't come on Wednesday or Thursday; just Dave and Ken.)

Here Ken is lining up the new hardwood strips in the eating area in the kitchen. I really liked their nail gun contraption. It had it's own compressor thing, and it drove nails in the flooring with a pull of the trigger.

Here is the finished floor in the kitchen. Pretty, huh???

And here is my amazingly wonderful new gas stove with convection oven and shiny surface. We have really enjoyed cooking on it already. I love it so far. The oven works so much better than the old one.

Here is the eating area today after all the clean-up that Greg and I did. It is so warm and beautiful. And all I did is mop with vinegar and warm water. I love it!