Our home has been undergoing some major interior changes lately! (As I'm typing this, I'm sitting in my living room in a camp chair while wearing headphones.) We had to have some noisy, boring foundation work done in our family room. The family room is on a concrete slab, which was starting to settle. That meant we needed to rip up the carpet in the family room so the foundation crew could do their thing. Ripping up the carpet led us to a much more exciting change: getting new carpet! When we moved into our home 10 years ago (how in the world has it been 10 years?!) we didn't have the funds to replace the carpet throughout our whole house. So we prioritized replacing only the carpet in the family room that was heavily stained. The rest of the carpet in the house was in decent condition and a neutral color. We've done a lot of living on those carpets throughout the past ten years!
Even though Jazzy was the best dog ever, she did occasionally trot through the house with muddy paws. Adam and I used to eat dinner on the couch in front of the TV before we had kids and have spilled random food and drinks on the carpet. Lyla and Archer have done their fair share of making messes. I can still recall halfheartedly wiping up their spit up from the carpet when they were little babies. Needless to say, it was time to replace the carpet!
Now I know some of you may be wondering why we didn't opt to replace the carpet with wood floors. While I very much like the look of wood floors, I just prefer the coziness of carpet in our living room, family room and bedrooms. I also prefer vacuuming carpet to vacuuming and mopping hard wood floors. Plus, the cost fit within our budget better.
We visited a local flooring store nearby to check out our options. It turns out there are way too many options out there! We eventually brought home several samples to test out in our home. It's always a good idea to get samples of flooring (or paint colors or fabric) and see what it looks like in your own home. Everyone's home has slightly different lighting and finishes and seeing the sample in the space really does help.
We settled on a nylon plush Shaw carpet (the color is called Dockside View) for the living room, family room, bedrooms and upstairs hallway. Nylon is supposed to be more durable, not show traffic as much, and have a longer lifespan than polyester. (Of course that also means it is more expensive.) We decided to go with nylon, as opposed to a natural fiber like wool, for it's stain-resistant properties. It's a beige color with some gray undertones. It's slightly darker than our old carpet, but it somehow manages to compliment our many different paint colors and wood trims throughout our house. For the stairs, we opted for a nylon Berber patterned carpet. We wanted something with a lower pile for the stairs and since it was a smaller space, we decided to have some fun with pattern.
Once we decided on the carpet, getting it installed was quite the challenge! Adam and I opted to rip out the old carpet to save some money. Adam also wanted to add more screws to the plywood to help alleviate all the many squeaks our floors made. That meant we had to tear out the old carpet and pad and remove all the staples that were holding the pad in place. Adam also wanted to paint some of the ceilings since we would have to move all the furniture and it wouldn't matter if we got paint on the subfloor. He also wanted to replace the light fixture above the stairs and add some decorative molding. The light bulb burned out in the original light fixture years ago, but it was way too high to get to in order to replace it.
With all those tasks on our to do list, we decided it would be far simpler to complete if Archer and Lyla were out of the way. So I brought the kids to my parents' house for an extended visit. While we were visiting, Adam stayed back to change the light fixture and add the decorative molding. This was no easy task for him! In fact, he had to build his own scaffolding in order to get to the light fixture! Much to the kids' delight, he got the scaffolding up before we left for my parents so they got to play on it.
After giving Adam a week to complete his stairway masterpiece, I returned without the kids to help rip out all the old carpet. (Thanks for babysitting, Grandma & Grandpa!) Due to rain delays, it worked out that the foundation crew and the carpet crew would be starting on the same day. That meant that we couldn't have any furniture in the family room or the garage or parts of the basement. (They were also doing foundation work in the garage and basement.) So Adam and I had to get very creative about where to put all of the furniture from our living room, family room, Archer's room, Lyla's room and guest room/office, while also allowing pathways for the crews. We had couches and tables piled up all over the place! It was like a real-life game of Tetris.
Once all the furniture was moved, Adam focused on ripping up the old carpet and pad. I helped haul it outside and remove the staples leftover from the old pad, while Adam added close to 2,000 screws! It's no wonder we had so many squeaky floors. A lot of the nails were coming up and Adam realized some of the original nails didn't even hit the floor joists. It's safe to say our subfloors are now securely in place and our floors are far less squeaky.
Finally, the crews arrived and took care of the foundation work and carpet installation. It was a hectic couple of days around our house, but well worth the outcome. The mudjacking we had to have completed in our family room did result in some cracked bathroom tile in our half bathroom, so stayed tuned for our next project. But the carpet went in without a hitch and it looks so incredibly nice! I really didn't realize just how stained and worn out our old carpet was getting. Our new carpet looks and feels so luxurious! It's a bit hard to see just how much better things look with new carpet, but I'll share some pictures.
Let's start with our stairway. Look at our sad, worn out stair carpet and that piddly little light that we had going on.
Now look at our stairway! It looks so much grander with the new carpet and decorative molding! And it's certainly far more illuminated with our new chandelier!
It's amazing how much nicer the carpet feels when you are walking around on it. I find Archer and Lyla just laying on the floor quite often now. After we bought the carpet I got a little anxious that the new carpet would be too dark and make our rooms feel gloomy, but I'm happy to report it's the perfect shade! Our hope is that any messes or spills that will inevitably occur won't stand out quite as much as they did on our old, lighter carpet.
I took advantage of the kids being away to rearrange and declutter their rooms a bit. The new furniture layout in both of their rooms gives them a bit more space to play. They were both so excited about the new carpet and new layout that they haven't even noticed the stuff I decluttered. (Shhhh....please don't tell them!)
I'm glad I have this photo of Lyla's cutely curated bookshelf because it will never look like this again.
Now Archer, on the other hand, truly enjoys a nice tidy space. He is very good about cleaning up and knows exactly where things belong. I'm glad I passed down my organizing genes to at least one of my children.
Ahh, another lovely organized bookshelf!
It's safe to say our whole family is enjoying our new carpet.
Now onto our next project...replacing bathroom tile!
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