Getting the Job Done!

 
It's finally happening. This is the 4th house Luke and I have lived in since we got married and started our family and it's the FIRST house I am getting to decorate as I want. (Insert little happy dance here.)
We've been wanting to re-floor the house since the allergist said our carpet is a big part of the boy's allergy problems, but re-flooring a house is crazy expensive and other things like, well bills, had to come first.
Well, LOWES had a large flooring sale about a month ago and combined with Luke's discount and some other order we were able to get the floor I really wanted for about HALF the normal price.
He came home from work one day and said, "what do you think? You want to rip it up and put down wood?"
Do I? YES!!! No more nasty carpet.
Then, to my utter shock and surprise, he suggested that while we were at it, I might as well pick out paint and just re-paint like I've been wanting to since we moved in almost 4 years ago. I went the next day and began picking out paint samples (which I discovered is a much harder job than I thought).

Fourteen samples later; yes, 14...we agreed on one we both liked and started the job of painting over the nasty mustard yellow that we've lived with and I have loathed. (I should have taken a picture of all the samples on the wall. It looked like one big ugly patchwork quilt). It was wonderful not worrying about a drop cloth or covering the floor. I was saying "so long" to that carpet and we dripped paint everywhere.

Then began the process of ripping up that old nag and hauling here out of here.
 I want to put a plug in for child labor here. My kids worked their little rear ends off for an entire week pulling the hundreds of carpet stapes out of the floor. I blissfully rewarded them with Half-Price Sonic Slushies every day and trips to the creek. They cleaned up that floor to the point we could nearly eat off it.

At first, we weren't going to rip up the stairs carpet. But after pointing out that a person was going to go from wood floor to carpet when they hit the stairs to an entirely different carpet once they got to the basement, I had Luke talked into us re-flooring the stairs too. Then I told him I would just paint the stairs instead of laying wood down and save us a couple hundred bucks and he was all for it.

We got all excited....until we hit the hallway with it's 2 closets, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom.
Some choice words were muttered late at night after innocent ears were tucked into bed because this hallway alone took us over a week to finish.

Just so my mother and grandmother don't think that they need to sign me up for an episode of Hoarders, I will say that my children only lived in this chaos for about 3 weeks.

The bedroom/playroom/I sleep in there with sick children room became a minefield of all our living room possession.
Laundry, well, it simply didn't happen until my husband and kids pointed out that they were all lacking socks and underwear and a couple of the boys had simply skipped the underwear for a day or two. Then I payed them in Netflix time to wash, dry, fold and put away 10 loads of laundry in two days time. I was again amazed that a 6,8 and 9 year old could "cheerfully" take over laundry duty when unlimited TV time was promised (as long as they continued folding and in between episodes putting it all away).

I meanwhile spent the last week doing this:

.......and this with an almost 40 pound 3 year old clinging to my back like some kind of little tree monkey.

I may be re-visiting the chiropractor when this is all said and done.

But in less than 24 hours time, I think we can move back into our upstairs and bask in a work well done.
I'll post pictures of it all put back together.