Displaced

For four days last week we found ourselves displaced.

Ok, so maybe displaced is too strong of a word. It would be more accurate to say we stayed with my grandmother for four days across town while we had hardwood floors installed throughout our home.

We bought our home nine years ago as a new construction. At the time it seemed perfect. But what is it about time spent in a house that makes so many of its features become glaringly lacking?

For several years I had been telling, or should I say warning, my husband that I wanted hardwood.

"I like carpet" was always his reply.

Then a year ago we got a dog, and I was more convinced than ever that all the carpet downstairs had to go. It was constantly stained and no matter how much cleaning we did it was just plain gross.

There were also pieces of tile that began to bulk. We found a guy to come fix it, or so we thought, but he patched it up and never returned to finish the job.

At this point I became tired of trying to convince my husband and started making calls.

After several no shows and a hard time tracking down anyone in town that would do the job, I took the recommendation of a neighbor and found someone reliable.

We originally had hardwood in our dining room, but it wasn't quite the color I was envisioning for the whole downstairs.

 Here is the updated result.

They ran the wood longways throughout the entire downstairs, excluding the bathroom where the tile remains, and I definitely think it feels like it opened the house up and gives the impression of more space.

It took a lot of work on our end to get the house ready for the installation. While the men installing the wood moved all the heavy furniture, we had to remove all breakables, pictures off the walls and everything out of the closets before their arrival. This is what our upstairs bonus room looked like after that:

I knew we would have a lot of work in store for us putting everything back up when we returned home, but there was one bit of information - and it's a REALLY big bit of information - that no one saw fit to pass along to me. And that is the amount of dust we would be cleaning up upon or arrival back home.

By dust I mean so much gritty, grimy covering in E-VE-RY room of the house that my father-in-law had to come over with heavy powered equipment yesterday to help us tackle the walls, the curtains and every nook and cranny in between. It took me four wipe-downs of the kitchen to get the counters and appliances clean. I also had to wash every single dish, pot and pan because the dust seeped into closed cabinets. 

On the bright side, not only does the floor look fantastic, but I get to do some rug shopping! I was super excited last week as I browsed the rug collection on Joss & Main's website. It will likely take several months to acquire all we need because I'm going to have to spread the expense across multiple credit card payments, but I'm eager to add color and design to our new floors.