Livin' a Largo Life: Do they even still MAKE carpet?

When we moved into our home in June 2013, each of the bedrooms was carpeted. As is the current trend for multiple reasons, we too were eager to rid its pestilence from our home--I mean, seriously! Can you even begin to imagine what is in carpet? Especially when you are not the first owner. But I digress into my rabbit hole of OCD...

Laminate?
Since Michael and I are beginning a new life here in Florida, we aren't exactly in a position to spend vast amounts of money immediately on this new home, so we are using what we have and doing small projects at a time to bring this short sale property up to the standards of its former glory as 'The Gem of the Neighborhood', which is what our neighbors told us of the home when we first moved in.

A need for frugality is why we are using some left over laminate flooring that Michael retained, transported over half of the U.S., and stored in our garage for months after installing it into the home he owned and lived in back in San Antonio prior to our engagement. Plus, we needed the garage space for our other hobbies and endeavors into woodworking. So, although I would prefer tile or hardwood...this is what we've got and it looks great. We'll have to see if it holds up to the wear and tear of 2 dogs and 2 cats (and a husband).

To begin with, we put a water resistant underlayment as a barrier for spills and to provide some cushion for our comfort. We used a skill saw and jigsaw for the angle cuts around the doors, closet, entryway to the room, and to stagger the slats. Unfortunately, Michael did most of the work laying the flooring, so no pictures of that.

Nothing gets done without a sense of urgency
This room, prior to our removal of the carpet and installation of the laminate was kind of the 'catch all' room. We had set up a bed for guests in another room and had not gotten around to unpacking some of the moving boxes labeled 'office', 'books', and 'teaching'. In order to get the ball rolling on this install, Michael took all of the boxes and moved them into the guest bedroom. It was stacked full and there was hardly any space after all was said and done.

This is a problem when your grandmother is traveling from Corpus Christi, TX in a day and will need to have a place to call her own during her visit with us. So, one day prior to her arrival I zipped over to Home Depot in my little 2 door Nissan Altima Coupe and purchased four 60ft strips of quarter round. My car is not 60ft long. Plus, I was in heels. It was hilarious and more than one contractor gave their advice to me as to how I should accomplish the transport and in hind sight I should have strapped them to the top of my car like a Christmas tree, but instead I laid down the back seats, ran the strips of quarter round from my front seat floorboard through the backseat, through the trunk, and it still hung about 4ft out of the back of the car. A very nice Home Depot clerk held the strips up for me as I backed out of my space and then I was on my own. Thank goodness it is only 3 miles from my house to the Home Depot, that the strips only scraped the concrete occasionally, and I didn't run into any cops in between.

The rest is pretty straight forward. I used a mitre cut box to make the angles in the same degree of cut as the molding. But first I had to cut the overflow of the underlayment. I will still have to go back with caulking to create a seal and give it a finished look, as well as, painting all of the molding, but for now we can take all of the boxes from the guest bedroom and place them back into the 'catch all' room in time for my grandmother to enjoy her stay here in sunny Largo!