Installing Laminate Floors, Day 4: The Pink Carpet Is Outta Here!

A momentous event happened at Casa 26 this weekend. The loathed pink carpet that was in our basement family room, is no more. The time for it to hit the dump was long overdue, and over the weekend we finally ripped it out.

(Imagine me squealing with glee.)

If you remember, this is what the room looked like when we moved into the house.





I'm told that there was a time that pink carpet was all the rage. Maybe the previous homeowners were au current after all?

...I doubt it.

Even though the "official" before photo shows an empty room, we actually did have some furniture down there. We couldn't get it all out of there though, so we left the treadmill and TV in the room and worked around them. It was actually pretty easy to do. If you're thinking about laying laminate floors of your own, but have similar gigantic/heavy/fragile furniture that you're concerned about moving around, you can definitely work around it if you need to.

Nemo graciously lent us his supervisory skills in exchange for a game of fetch.

Luckily, we didn't encounter any gross glued-to-the-concrete-fuzz under the carpet like we did in the dining room, so the removal process was relatively easy. Instead, this faux wood-ish vinyl tile stuff was glued to the concrete instead. Maybe this was in style at some point too?



After removing the strips of carpet tacks, we covered the oh so lovely vinyl with our moisture barrier and started laying the planks on top.



By the end of the day we finished about 75% of the room so now we only have a few more rows left to do before we can officially call it done. I know we could have finished the whole space in a single day if we had gotten an earlier start on it, but c'est la vie. I would have been cutting planks at midnight, but I'm sure my neighbors would've hated me for it.

Here's how it looks now:

Ignore the squished up pillows on the couch. I was too tired to fix them before snapping pics.



You'll notice in the next photo that there is still pink carpet on the stairs. Even though we're planning to put the laminate on the stairs as well, to keep things from getting slick we're going to put down a carpet runner. I've been researching and it seems like it's something we may or may not DIY, but until we're ready to to lay it all down at once, the old carpet is staying for safety's sake.



So far I'm pretty happy with the progress we've made with the floors. We've only spent four days working on them and 99% of the dining room and 75% of the basement family room are already done. On day five of re-flooring our house (whenever that is), we'll finish this room and get started on either the living room or the upstairs landing by the bedrooms. And then of course will come the stairs...

Any bets on how many days it will take to finish it all? I put the over/under at 10 working days.





By the way, I'll also be linking this up to these great parties. Check them out!