The Dining Room Transformation

When we last visited my dining room, right after my husband bought home

“the Str!pper”,  the sub-floor was completely clean and finally free of flooring adhesive.

Of course the rest of the house was covered in a fine layer of dust and we were exhausted.

But we pressed on and started laying our new oak flooring.  My husband, the endless researcher, decided that he wanted to try a new product called, Elastilon Self Adhesive Underlayment.

You can see this product in the picture below, it is the grey plastic stuff my husbands is kneeling on.  The Elastilon is basically a pad with adhesive on one side.  The adhesive is covered with a sheet of plastic and you peel off the plastic the width of one plank and press the plank in place.  What you end up with is a floating floor that has a pad stuck to the bottom.

The installation moved along fairly fast and was easy to work with. 

It was a bit pricy but it looks great. 

We moved right on to the molding.  We went to a local molding supplier and snagged these 6” base boards for $1 a foot.  I was thrilled with the saving, we would have paid more than double that at Lowe’s or Home Depot.  But I soon realized that this was a carefully played con game.  My husband “discovered” that he “old” miter saw was not big enough to cut the new base boards so he “had” to buy a larger saw.  I should have seen that one coming.

It only took us a day to paint, cut and nail the base boards and the 1/4 round moldings into place.

If you are a regular reader of “Three Dogs At Home” you know how Tasha, our big white fluffy dog, loves construction projects.  But both hubby and I were surprised as she slept while we were using the air compressor and pneumatic nailer.

It is great to have a compressor this light and compact but it is still noisy but it never seem to bother Tasha.  The two little dogs were hiding out under the pillows on our bed.

But cutting and nailing the moldings in place is only half the battle when adding new molding to your home.  Then comes the filling and the caulking.  My hubby says I can work magic when it comes to finishing up the moldings.   I think he may be talking up my “magic” skills so he doesn’t have to help.  But that’s okay, I like doing all that detail work and it is a good thing since he left me with moldings that needed a lot of magic.

And here I am getting ready to start filling and caulking.  I can’t get up and down without a lot of pain so once I am down on the floor I want to stay till the job is finished.  This is me sitting on a pad of micro fiber material so that I can slide around the floor.

I have noticed a lot of pictures in the pages of Better Homes and Gardens that show active people as blurred so I decided to follow the trend and include a blurry picture of myself.

And this is my tray of goodies I use to work my supposed miracles.

I put all the stuff I need to do the job on a tray, place the tray on a soft towel and slide the tray right along with me.  I love caulking molding because it makes such a big difference.

Just one last look at the dining room “before”.

While this is not a complete “after” this is what the dining room looks like now.

I love the look of the new floors. 

Now all we have to do is finish the hall and the half bath and then comes all the fun stuff, new curtains, new finishes on the furniture, and new accessories.

Thanks for reading,

Traci