Home decor and renovation craftalong

That rug is amazing!!! And black light sensitive, too :heart_eyes:

4 Likes

Well, I don’t know how, but my polite angriness worked because somehow the guys fixed it today! Without complaining. I don’t know how because at first they said it would cause a delay and damage, but apparantly it was fixable in a day and they’re going to be able to tile tomorrow just as planned.

I am completely tired of these guys but they’re doing their work, and as far as I can see it all looks done properly, as well. They just have absolutely no taste and apparantly they don’t like working from plans! We are now slowly approaching the stage of thinking about the interior.

We’ve always had cheap vinyl floors and while it wasn’t ideal (gets damaged relatively easy) it was very convenient for cleaning. You can just sweep or mop and you’re done. We’re going to tile the entire downstairs for convenience sake, because we’re both clumsy and don’t particularly enjoy cleaning. Deep down I’ve always wanted solid hardwood floors but it’s just not a great idea if you’re as clumsy as us. It needs too much maintenance. I am definitely going to spill boiling hot coffee or tea on it, and I’m going to be too lazy to wax or polish the floor regularly.

I’ve been looking at floors and I’ve recently seen floors advertised that look like laminate and are easy to DIY, except the top layer is real wood. It looks pretty fancy but is still affordable. I’ve been considering it for upstairs, including my craft room, but I’m not sure if tiny crumbs of thread would get stuck in the gap between the floor planks. If that would happen then it may be a better idea to just get vinyl flooring again, but I don’t love the plastic-y look.

5 Likes

We had wood looking ceramic tile planks installed in our new bathroom. Super durable and easy clean up. I know someone who had it installed in her living room and dining room.

6 Likes

That’s called engineered wood, we have it in our kitchen. It was messed up from the previous owners dog but seems durable otherwise. I honestly ignore our hardwood floors. They are over 100 years old at this point, lol. They get vacuumed, that’s it.
Some rubbery wood looking tile for industry (restaurant, retail) is very nice & comfortable to stand in and incredibly durable. I’ve seen it in many styles

2 Likes

Yes, that’s the type of tile we’re getting for downstairs! But a bit too pricey for upstairs. It looks pretty nice and also works well with underfloor heating, which we have downstairs but not upstairs.

1 Like

That wood tile is really nice. We just went with wood-look vinyl planks for the basement. Durable, waterproof, and not too hard or slippery. I have kids and a big dog. :person_shrugging: I love hardwood floors, in theory. That’s what I have in my bedroom, but, like @Magpie’s , mine are old and just get swept and occasionally mopped.

2 Likes

But if they’re over 100 years old, that’s fine, they look authentic! Thanks, I didn’t know it was called engineered floor in English. It’s relatively cheap compared to other, nicer options because it’s so easy to DIY.

I hadn’t thought of the vinyl planks / tile option. I was thinking vinyl on a roll like carpet, with a wood floor printed on it. We used to have that everywhere in this house, and in our previous house as well. It’s cheap, it feels nice and comfortable to stand in, but at least ours wasn’t that durable at all. But ours was cheap, maybe there are different qualities. Ours was easily damaged by moving furniture or dropping sharps objects, and wherever we spilled tomato sauce in the kitchen we’d get bright pink stains (the colour of a fluorescent marker pen). But I loved how easy it was to sweep up fabric crumbs and little threads.

2 Likes

Our hardwood floors are only about 20 years old but we’ve never done anything other than sweep/vacuum and mop (I’m not counting that we did refinish them when we bought the house 10 years ago but only because we needed to replace some boards due to water damage and they couldn’t match the floor without refinishing the whole thing).

We have slate tile in our kitchen which has been great. I dropped my iron on it and it didn’t even chip the slate (RIP rowenta iron).

2 Likes

We have engineered wood floors in our rental home and it seems like it is a good option for homes where there is going to be a lot of activity as well as humidity and heat like we have. They are durable, look nice, and are super easy to clean (dry mop or wet mop, vacuum, etc.). You can always put down area rugs and they are less costly to change if you decide to redecorate! We have rugs in every room, including the kitchen, with just enough of the floor showing for looks. Our pets hated our wood floors in previous homes because they can’t get traction and would slide all around.

We had our old kitchen in Mexican clay tiles and that was a very bad idea…if you dropped anything, it was gone. I would love to have plain old linoleum floors in the kitchens and baths to keep clean. It is not that ugly junkie looking stuff from the 50’s…some of it looks very nice. Sounds like you are having fun with this…and great that they were able to fix your bath to how it was supposed to be!

2 Likes

We are looking at linoleum for our kitchen floor as well. The previous owners had large ceramic square tiles put in with thick grout lines. As the house has shifted, large cracks have formed in the grout and bits have come out. It looks terrible. Plus we think the the linoleum will better match the style of our old craftsman bungalow.

4 Likes


The house is ours! Now the work begins…

17 Likes

Woohoo! Congratulations! :tada:

3 Likes

Wonderful! I can already see beautiful hanging baskets of flowers on that lovely front porch!!!

2 Likes

Congratulations!!! I can’t wait to see the progress pictures.

3 Likes

Congratulations!

2 Likes

Yay! :confetti_ball::tada::beers::balloon:
Congratulations and happy decorating!!

1 Like

We just took my MIL, FIL, and SIL by. While we were there we ripped down the rainbow mosaic frosted window cling you can see in the windows behind us. :joy:

I cleaned the powder room yesterday, and today I took the opportunity to wipe out the microwave, and some of the fridge shelves. My SIL dove in and was like ‘What can I wipe out?!?!’

7 Likes

Congrats! So excited for you. Let me know if you have a painting party.
:grin:

3 Likes

The nice folks at Second St. Painting are coming on the 27th, to take down the wallpaper, repair the walls, and paint the 3 upstairs bedrooms, before we move stuff in there. Because living through wallpaper removal is gross. LOL

We figure we’ll do more one room at a time.

7 Likes

Warning: Long story, with some gross bits.

Also important to know the couple who sold us the house bought it in 2020, and as for care, seem to have put on a new roof, and installed hardwood flooring, but did little else. Including general cleaning.

Over the weekend my in-laws visited, and MIL & SIL did little bits of cleaning. SIL wiped out many parts of the fridge, including taking out most of the drawers & shelves and washing them down & drying them before putting them back. On Sunday night I did the same thing with the freezer, and assumed all was well and the fridge was now ready to be used.

Yesterday I went to the house to drop off cleaning supplies. I had a bottle of elderflower lemonade, and decided to put it in the fridge. When I opened the fridge I noticed two big plastic fridge pieces that we wiped down on Saturday, but SIL didn’t know where they went, so she just put them back in the fridge for me. Might as well pop those back in place!

The sides said ‘pantry guides’, and the fridge itself had a very wide drawer that said ‘pantry’, so I slid it out, and saw where the guide pieces fit in. When I went to put them back, I had to get low to the ground, and in doing so, I saw that there was some stuff along the back wall, behind that drawer, that we missed wiping out. Might as well clean that spot! :saluting_face:

Gross Bits Ahead

I pulled out the drawer and almost puked. Beneath the drawer, the fridge had a depression, about 1/2" deep, the width of the (very wide) fridge. It was full of standing water, and floating chunks of mold and crud. :nauseated_face: :face_vomiting: :rage:

There was so much liquid, I couldn’t dry it all with paper towels, and even if I did, I’d be putting soaked paper towels into non-watertight plastic bags, where they’d leak mold water all over our trash cans, so I closed the fridge, washed my hands and left to talk to husband. I showed him the pictures I took. (I’m sparing you all those.) He drove to our storage unit to find the shop vac, and got the water out of the fridge, then doused it in vinegar and let it soak. I went back over later to scrub and disinfect again. I also found the fridge model number, so I could look up the manual. Because the divorcing couple who sold the house to us left us none of the manuals or books to anything.

Meanwhile we ordered Ada a play yard and foam floor tiles to keep the mobile little monster penned up while we’re over at the house. (That same couple managed to remove a bunch of electrical outlet plates, so it’s really not safe.) :woman_facepalming: I went to mop the hardwood floors so they’d be clean before I put the play yard together. In doing so, I discovered that there are gaps between lots of the boards, that are already filling with dust and junk. Then over where the wall meets the floor, there were 1/2"-3/4" gaps. We’re pretty sure the couple was in the middle of putting in the hardwood themselves when they decided to divorce, and it’s like they just stopped everything midway. So today I’m looking for hardwood installation companies that could come take a look, and see what it would be to fix the gaps, before we move our stuff into the house.

8 Likes