What to Do With an Ugly Floor Heater

This week has been filled with highs and lows. And I don't just mean the artificial highs I've been getting from prescription pain meds. 

Last week I went under the knife (and some lasers) to get a torn tendon repaired in my ankle. It ended up being a lot more painful than I had anticipated, and I'm supposed to be couch-bound for at least two weeks. Not exactly a vacation, but my dad and Monty did decide to get in a little housework while I'm laid up.

The biggest job will be installing the ductless heater / air conditioner unit that I purchased in a moment of heat wave induced desperation. And they couldn't have picked a better time - with these bulky bandages on my leg and not being able to take a real shower, things are going to get ripe really fast!

Now that I am getting a brand new heating system, I figured I could finally stop procrastinating about removing the horrible floor heater in my living room! I wish I had a picture of the gross metal grate that had been covering it for probably fifty years. Under that grate was a hulking old beast of a floor heater that probably hadn't worked in over a decade. How did the last owners live without heat??

Anyway, I had Monty work his magic with some scraps of hardwood flooring we had left over from the garage renovation, and look how it turned out!

Monty used his planer to take off the top layer of stain, which was a heck of a lot quicker than sanding them all down, and then measured and cut each piece individually before laying it. Pretty cool!

I rubbed on a walnut colored stain and then immediately wiped it off, to get the grain to darken like that, and then went over the patch again with a golden pecan stain and varnish in one product. The match is pretty darn close!

I knew we'd never be able to seamlessly patch the hole, so figured why try? I think this is a little more interesting anyway, and no one is scared to walk on it - what a difference!

Kitchen Update: Finally Finished!

The day has come! It's over! The kitchen is finished! Exclamation points for all!!

It was quite the push to the finish, especially since I stupidly invited some people over for a reveal a little later this afternoon (way to give myself a deadline! why didn't I just do it next weekend??). But in reality, it's nice to have something to aim for. If you I don't have a real motivation to wrap things up, projects tend to stretch into the "I'll get around to finishing that eventually" category.

Alright, enough of my jibber-jabber! You want to see the finished product, don't you?! Let's do a before and after!

The craziest part is how clean everything looks, haha! That was no easy feat. But just check out the new sightline through to the rest of the house...

Three weeks ago, that picture would have been of a wall! It's truly an amazing transformation. Now that it's done, I sort of want to do it all over again!

Kitchen Update: Floor and Lighting

When you're gutting a room and starting over from scratch, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made. It's not just paint colors and cabinet door styles - there are functional considerations in everything you put in a room. For example, take flooring. Most people have tile in their kitchens, which makes sense. It's durable, it's waterproof, and it's relatively inexpensive. What's not to love?

Well, my kitchen is now visually connected to the rest of my house, and I wasn't keen on having such an abrupt flooring. But I also didn't want to put hardwoods in a room that would likely see spills and mops on a regular basis. So after a little research (and a lot of HGTV watching), I settled on cork floors, from Lumber Liquidators. The color is very close to the oak hardwood in the rest of the house, but the texture is different enough that it doesn't look like I tried (and failed) to match the floors.

Plus it was pretty easily to install. Just roll out the underlayment, and click down the tongue-n-groove planks. See how easy my big brother, Monty, makes it look?

Once it's all in, the seams practically disappear into the pattern.

Cork is also supposed to be easier on the feet, and naturally water resistant. Martin was curious, and soaked a piece in a bucket of water to see how it would hold up. It was about 12 hrs before the particle board backing started to swell, but the cork didn't change at all - not too shabby!

My dad has also completed the relocation and installation of the new lighting. I actually bought one of these lamps way back when I lived in the Meganplex, to put in my kitchen there, but the wiring was so decrepit that my dad didn't want to risk shorting anything out by replacing the fixtures. So this sat in a box until it was safely in its new home, and accompanied by a new twin (from Ikea, around $60 for the pair!).

Flooring, lighting, cabinets, all done! Up next, we have a whole lotta tiling to do! Time to get grouty!