Bedroom floor

The Master Bedroom

Or something like that. Look, you are going to have to put up with some pretty crummy pictures in the post. If you follow my posts somewhat regularly, you are used to this! If you are new, well, you'll get used to it! Many of my pictures are taken while I'm working and I realize "oh yeah! I should share this!" So please forgive me.

Our bedroom is really the last room in the house that needs flooring. We painted before we moved in, but we figured we would redo it someday. The problem is that because it was already so crummy, we didn't much care how clean it was on a regular basis. Once a month or so I would try to dig my way out of the piles of mail and clothes, but normally it looked like...

THIS! Yes, blurriness was part of that look. Shhh

And our dresser looked like this. Sort of hiding a huge tangle of 
cords that were for a no longer connected modem? I have no idea
 why we left that all there for so long. We've had a portable wifi 
device for 6 months!

My desk often looked like this. Covered, un-accessible because
it is blocked by boxes of mail that needs to be shredded or filed....

And our closet was regularly overflowing with our clothes
and other assorted junk.

This is my night stand. Books, mail, purses, shoes,
everything I might need in the next ... never.

Another terrific picture of our closet. I just couldn't take it anymore!
We went on a trip in October and I was really enjoying living out of 
a suitcase! To come home to this was more than I could take! Add 
that to the other projects and messes in the rest of the house, 
and I was just about ready to pitch everything on the front lawn!So I started purging clothes, but I knew that wasn't going to be 
enough. What I really wanted to do was clean up the room and 
make it a space we might actually enjoy being in. 
My husband hated the room too.
It's difficult to care about a space that you have nothing invested 
in. I started thinking about how I was going to get it done,
 knowing thatthe room would need to be gutted to do 
ANYTHING towards improving it.  
What we needed was new flooring! 
The floor was the biggest eyesore of the room.

Really, there was no flooring. It was Kilzed subfloor with a couple 
of rugs thrown over it. And it was dirty. I knew I had to start at 
the bottom and work from there.

As luck would have it, my oldest boys were asked to house/dog sit
for my dad over a 3 day period. I decided that I could probably get 
flooring in this room in that amount of time. What I could NOT 
do was expect my husband to help me during his busiest time of 
year - Mr. Ireland is a HVAC repair man, so winter in Alaska 
is THE busiest time of year for him! He works extra long hours, 
weekends, late nights for no-heat calls and has ZERO energy to 
put toward our house. He also neglects to rest and take care of 
himself, so I knew that not onlycould he not help, but he NEEDED 
a peaceful, clean space possibly more than I did!

So I hatched a plan - I convinced my husband that they boys 
should not be left over night at their grandpa's house unattended 
and asked him if he would stay with them over there.
I would have 48 hours to do the whole thing! 
I set to work planning.


Step 1: Order my lumber. Simple enough. I ordered three sheets of 1/2" certified sanded plywood and asked Home Depot to cut them into 11.5" widths down the length, 4 planks per board. I had 11 boards left from our living room flooring project to add to it. So 5 and 3/4 full sheets of plywood went into this room. I ordered them the day before I needed them and then picked them up the next morning.
Step 2: Gut the room.

YUCK. That is grime. *shudder*

Closet purged, now to empty it.

Yuck. You know, you might think that as bad as that looks I would paint it again before laying floor, right? But no. I had 2 days!! There's no time for painting! I did attempt to mop. It wasn't working, so I moved on.

I started laying planks in the far corner. Just me and a nail gun, laying wood planks.

Things went pretty well until...I realized that some of my boards were NOT cut to the magical 11.5"! Oh yay!

See those gaps? Got a few of those. We're going to call them "character" and "authenticity". I love this room right at this moment though. I do.

I thought you might want to see what a dining room stuffed with ALL of my personal belongings STUFFED into it. (I lie, there is another room upstairs with JUST my stuff and another in the basement with JUST the Mr.'s). It was a pretty tight fit, getting in and out of that hallway with boards.

View from the kitchen

View from the hall.

Clothes stacked up high.

WHY do we have so much STUFF?

Can't look anymore.

Nope.

Back to work. Actually, done staining and all the stuff piled, I mean NEATLY arranged in our room. A good portion of it never came back. :D

I don't love the gaps. But I can live with them because I have FLOORING.

So here is the deal with the stain. I used an all in one Minwax, stain and seal. There is a funny story that goes with this, but I'm going to save myself some embarrassment. Remind me to tell it someday.

And now a few pictures of what our room *should* look like on a regular basis. But I won't lie: its 6 months later and my room is cluttered. It's not nearly as bad, but it could use a purge. Anyway, keep scrolling.

I have one plank yet to lay. I couldn't decide if I wanted to pull all the trim out and lay it now, so I left it. I guess I didn't want to mess with it.

There you have it. Flooring on the cheap in 2 days. My husband really loved the room and I do very much enjoy not looking at the yucky, dirty, Kilzed subfloor. That's me there, by the way, in case you ever see me around town and think "Hey, isn't that that lady who does half cocked projects on her house out of strange materials?" Yes, that is me, the lady that torments her family with unusual projects, never ending, still not completely unpacked after 4 years, never quite happy with complicated. SIGH.
I started a new project just after this one, by the way. About 2 weeks later. Yep. It's coming along....