Adventures in Vinyl

This past weekend Lance & I spent most of Friday and part of Saturday putting in some vinyl plank flooring in one of the bedrooms downstairs.  So this may sound easy peasy to all you DIY experts…but for us (so NOT the handy/diy type) this was a pretty big accomplishment!

I was opposed to vinyl at first (cheap, ugly, blah) but when we decided that we wanted something easy enough to do ourselves, inexpensive, and water-safe….vinyl just fit the bill.  Plus after pulling up the nasty carpet that was there we discovered the concrete floor wasn’t quite even with a “hill” right in the middle.  So anything solid and flat (like laminate i was originally wanting) was just not going to work.  The plank wood-looking stuff is what sealed the deal for me…it’s really not that bad!  Considering we sprung for the real wood floor upstairs…we decided it was OK to go cheap for this room.

Up to this point we really only used the room for 2 things; holding the cat litter boxes, and doing Insanity.  Now that we need to get started on the nursery…we need the room to also double as my craft storage area.  It’s amazing what some paint and new flooring can do…I feel like it’s a whole new room…and I suddenly don’t hate it like I have since the day we moved in!  So hooray for that!

Ok now for the pics.

Here’s a small glimpse of what the room looked like before I started painting (it seems I deleted all the old pics…evidence of how much i hated the room to begin with):

And now here it is after!

We still need to do some trim along the bottom edge of the wall…thanks to the wood paneling not going all the way down to the floor in a lot of areas…but we’re in no rush…we’ll get to it when we get to it.  I was able to successfully migrate all my knitting/sewing/crafting crap down there and we still have plenty of space for working out!

Now onto the nursery!!

**Sorry no week 19 update…I will do a week 20 one I promise!  Complete with ultrasound pics from today!!  Get excited!

So I painted a rug.

That’s right friends..I joined the chevron rug-painting bandwagon.  What can I say…that darn Pinterest made me do it!!! (If you don’t know what Pinterest is…I suggest you crawl out of the hole you’ve been living in and join…you can thank me later)

When I came across Cape27′s blue version I was convinced I had to at least attempt this rug-painting thing.  And so off to Ikea I went…picked me up an Erslev rug…and got to taping.

At first I tried to just free-hand the design…but 4 hrs, 1 pkg of frog tape, and 2 really sore knees later…I had only managed to get 2 chevron rows done.  It was at the point I realized that maybe I should make a stencil.  So I did…and let me tell you…Best Idea EVER!!  Seriously…if you attempt this…make some type of stencil or guide.  So much easier than measuring it all out.

Ta-Da!  All taped and ready for some paint!  I used Valspar’s Tidal Teal.  The painting actually took a lot longer than I thought…I spent about 4 hours total on it over 2 nights.

All painted!  I let it dry for about 24hrs before I peeled back all the frog tape (which btw worked amazingly!) Now the rug is happy at home in our little seating area/dinning room.

This room is still very much a work in progress.  We still need some type of coffee table, a chair or two, stuff on the walls, and some curtains.  We’re going with the grey/yellow/turquoise color combo.  Here’s a full view of the room so far…

The rug under the dining table is this one from West Elm in Clay.

Oh and if you’re curious…this is what this room looked like shortly after we moved in last June.

Um can you say BEIGE?!  Basically everything in this room has changed…crazy town!  New hardwood, two-tone grey paint, rugs, and some new furniture has really made a huge difference.  Up next is finding some yellow fabric to make curtains with, and putting together a gallery wall behind the dinning table!  Woohoo!