KITCHEN

Before

During

After

Like everything in our house, the kitchen and hallway to the back door was actually carpeted!! Looked okay for about a month, but then it quickly got bad. Tried renting a steam cleaner a few times, but that got expensive and it needed to be done almost monthly. I couldn't wait to get the carpet out, but when I started looking into a kitchen renovation, I discovered our cabinets were built-in, so if we wanted to change the floor (ie: replace the existing subfloor), the cabinets pretty much have to be replaced as well. As much as I'd love to do that, we don't really have the money right now, so I had to find an interim solution.

One day in August 2007 I got the bright idea to try to pull up a bit of the carpet to see what was underneath - this yeilded the fabulous geometric carpet that was either the original one, or used as underlay, that you will see below. This second carpet was actually glued to the floor! At this point I couldn't take it anymore, and I decided the carpet HAD to go, so I ripped both layers out, scraped off all the glued parts that I could, and rented a belt sander to flatten out the rest. That took 2 days. I then went and bought the cheapest vinyl tile I could find, in a pattern that was somewhat decent and went with my outdated kitchen. I had a week's worth of holidays from work, and Uncle John happened to be visiting, so he came over and helped me lay the tile. It took us two more days. In less than 1 week and for under $300, I had replaced the carpet with vinyl! Hmm, things seem to go faster when I'm in charge of the project.... :)

We are hoping to do a full kitchen reno (new cupboards, counter, floors, and possibly changing/moving interior walls) within the next 5 years, but until then I can live with what I've got. Over the years, we have replaced the '70s era appliances with nice new white ones, so that's one step in the right direction. However, the walls still need to be painted - we removed the wallpaper at the same time as we did in the living room, and the walls need to be patched in a few places, but overall they're structurally sound. I plan to paint them the same colour as the living room for now. I also have to paint the hallway to the back door (the next lighter colour on my paint card), and replace the baseboards (which were destroyed when they were removed to do the floor).- That's all that is in the plans for now...