Home Improvement... Maybe

As you all may remember, we were in the market for a house and despite the delightful ups and downs of that, we managed to close on one at the beginning of March. We've been homeowners for over 20 days and it's continued to be a roller coaster. The house was a foreclosure, so we expected to put work into it (um, also it smelled like a dog had been living there and...doing other things freely there), so we've been trying to make it more habitable. Needless to say, it has been a very busy, very tiring three weeks and this is our last week to do improvements before we move it. (Yes, we've been renting still - that is a story for another post.) And, since you've seen nothing of our dog house (heh heh), I thought I'd give you a little taste of the progress.

This is the room we like to call the library, mostly because I intend to fill it with bookcases and books.  I know, my photo taking skills are amazing.

Looking from the living room to the kitchen.  You may notice some mysterious stains on the carpet there.  That is what led us to the next photo...

Oh, goodbye carpet.  We do NOT miss you or your smells (though, it does still linger in the bedroom, unfortunately).

This is the library again, sans stinky carpet.  There also appeared to be mold underneath it.  No worries, I bleached that concrete like nobody's business.

Which brings us to...

Hello, easy snap-together laminate flooring!  (And friendly helper Alex who was kind enough to give us a hand, which Vince obviously needed as you'll see below.)

Here is that first delightful row in place, a moment I managed to historically capture, right before we realized that we were putting it in backwards (which was why it was proving not as "easy" and "snap-together-y" as advertised).  Ah, at least it was only the first row!

Finally on the right track! 

This is all we managed that first day, but it was progressing quite nicely.  You'll also notice that our paint job which looks ok in some of the photos above looks horrifying here.  Don't get me started on it, I'm still trying to like it :)

And yes, there has been further progress (the library and the living room are both finished, except for the extra hard parts of cutting boards to fit in weird places), but that is the end of my downloaded photos for now.  I'll let you know when I get more stuff downloaded, but don't hold your breath.  It's going to be a very busy week.