The Demo

It's been three years since we bought the house on the Hill; I can't believe it's already been that long! 3 years later, and was have made this builder's grade home feel and look more custom. We always loved the bones of this house, and for the most part, it checked off most boxes when we started looking at houses.

Our house sat empty for about a year before we purchased it; good for us since we got it for such a good deal, bad for us because multiple subcontractors were in here. The original contractor who put the hardwood floors in used a water base stain but never did the top coat. Then when we came in, he had a different contractor come in finish the job that was left undone. We don't know what happened to them, but within months of us living here, all of the polyurethane started peeling and chipping, and the floorboards started to separate. Of course, the boards will expand and contract if you do not have a humidifier in the house, but in some spots, you could see the subfloor. A couple companies came out hoping the floors could be fixed, but that was not the case. They said the floors had to be completely ripped out, and new flooring would have to be laid. I will never have hardwood floors again; not worth the hassle!

Why would we spend all of this money to replace what we had? They were going to get destroyed, and how fast this time? We have a dog; there are always kids in this house, and more than just ours on a good day. We started looking at other options to replace our horrible floors. We looked into laminate flooring, which is durable. We had it in our old house and never had any issues. It was pricey, but we would never have to worry about refinishing them and keeping the wood floor look.

Our friend built this unbelievable, magazine-worthy house and did tile floors on the first floor. We had plank tile that looked like wood grain in our kitchen at the old home, but we only thought to do it in part of the house. Why not do it on the first floor? The dogs won't be able to destroy it, and the kids won't be able to, either.

We left our friend's house and stopped at the tile store on the way home.

We didn't want the tile to look like tile and have big grout lines. And, of course, Jeff and I liked two different color tiles. I picked one that was more tan and light, whereas he wanted one that was slightly darker but had more grey. We brought the samples home, laid them on the floor, and invited everyone we knew to our house to help make the decision. Jeff won. I didn't care and was happy to get rid of the horrible hardwood floors.

Before installing the floors, we had a couple of projects to start and finish. The pantry in the house sucked; it was so small, and no matter how organized we tried to keep it, it just wasn't functional. We changed our dining room into a walk-in pantry and walk-through bar. Those rooms must have been built before so the tile could be laid there. At this point, our entire first floor was getting redone, which was not what we were expecting, but we were kinda the "go big or go home" people.

Let the demo begin!