So Long Carpet, Hello Hardwoods!

One of the first rooms we definitely wanted to tackle was our family room - AKA "the cave". It's the room where we spend most of our time - a lot of the girls' toys are housed in the cabinets and our TV is in this room. Plus, the fireplace! But it was SO dark and the carpet was super gross with the dog hair and awful smell in the carpet. 

While we'd love some drywall or even some shiplap in this space, we're working with a small budget, so here's what we decided to do with the space for now:

1. Prime & paint the paneling

2. Rip out the carpet

3. Add hardwood floors or refinish hardwoods (depending on what we found under the carpet)

4. Paint the ceiling

5. Possibly paint the brick on the fireplace

6. New curtains & area rug

We started by priming and painting most of the wood in the space. We painted first so that the carpet could act as a giant drop cloth, just in case there was hardwood flooring hiding under there. It took two coats of primer and 2-3 coats of paint + primer to get the job done. The wood was super dark and insanely thick, and it just sucked up the paint. 

Then we decided to remove the carpet to see whether or not we needed to buy hardwoods. We assumed at the very least we'd have to refinish the floors even if we did find hardwoods under the carpet, because why would someone cover up hardwood flooring with carpet unless it was damaged, right? Well apparently people actually do cover up perfectly good, beautiful, mint condition hardwoods with gross wall to wall carpet. When we pulled up the carpeting, there was a super THICK high quality carpet pad under it, and beneath that were absolutely beautiful hardwoods. I think the thick pad saved the floors from being stained by the dogs and kept them in mint condition. I couldn't believe our good luck. It saved us a ton of money and a boatload of back-breaking work.

We're still plugging away at the paint, but I can't wait to show you the transformation so far! xo, Lauren