Preparations for movie in day

We had a lot that we wanted to get done before we moved into our house. About half of those things actually got done by move in day. We were hoping to get our floors done by the time we moved in...that didn't happen. We picked our floor up on a crazy rainy night and brought it home to sit for three days so it could adjust to the temperature and humidity of our house. Three days later, about 4 days before move in day, we opened a couple boxes and did NOT like what we saw. Then I noticed that the boxes were labeled African Walnut. I ordered an African Magnolia...Crap!!!! We were on the phone with the company for two days straight and they finally told us that they were in the process of changing the product and that this was what we actually ordered, we just didn't know it. They told us not to open any more boxes, we wouldn't be able to return them if they were open. Aye aye aye! We decided that since we were already going to have to pay a 15-20% restocking fee if we did return it, we would open a couple more boxes to see what we thought of them. Turn out they were GORGEOUS, just what the sample looked like. So they are now nailed to our ever-so-secure sub-floor and look amazing (we're still not sure if they are Magnolia or Walnut. They look like Walnut to me.). With that little mishap we weren't left with any time to lay our floor before we moved in. I was really stressed about this at first but now I'm really grateful we didn't have them in because I would have been a paranoid wreck about people denting or scratching them bringing in huge furniture and heavy boxes.

My cute mom came down before we moved in to help us paint and to see our place. We got our color inspiration from the cutest plate ever made. I'll post about all of that in a bit. She was very helpful and we got a lot done while she was here.

although she did hang the cupboards wrong a few times...

The old wood floors throughout the bottom floor got torn up. The kitchen was by far the hardest part of this project. There were two layers of wood and two layers of linoleum. We got the first layer of wood up to discover the first layer of linoleum. It was a pain but not the worst thing to get up. What was under that was the WORST to get out. There were these horrible teal and cream speckled thick linoleum tiles that were impossible to tear out. We first tried to chip away at them with a crowbar and a hammer but they were coming off in tiny pieces and a lot of it was still sticking to the layer underneath it.

Then my smart husband decided to blowtorch the top of the tile to melt the adhesive and peel them up. It was horrible and stinky but much better than spending time chipping away at this awful tile. We almost died from the fumes so we made masks out of wash cloths secured with hair clips. We also almost burned our house down 3 times. Thank you Josh for being such a genius, this made our lives so much easier.

We had to shred old wallpaper that had been painted over and was starting to bubble, off of our kitchen wall.

And Josh finished laying the rest of the new sub-floor. He is amazing.