Goodbye carpet (our memorial day project)

We signed another year lease at this house. I am happy to stay here and would even consider eventually buying this place. I am so sick of moving! 

However the one thing that has always bothered me about this house was the white carpet. I am disgusted by it every day. After a year of living here there were so many stains on the carpet from kids peeing, coffee spilling, blood and mud tracked through. I was embarrassed to even invite friends over because the carpet was so awful. So one condition of our renewal was that the owners would pay to have wood laminate installed. We agreed to do the work if they would pay for materials. They agreed. 

Who knew what a massive project we had just undertaken? We decided to do it over the 3 day memorial day weekend. We though "oh, it will be easy! We'll finish in three days, no problem" 

Ha ha ha ha ha.... 

It turned into a nightmare. 

First, there was all the prep work. Ripping out the carpets, removing tacks and staples:

Then cleaning the floors:

That took the entire first day. Then the second day we finally started laying the wood. But even after a full day we didn't get far:

We decided to work well into the night:

Monday morning we set to work again to try to finish:

Luke was able to install all the flooring right at 5pm. Then he jumped in the shower and we ran off to our home group which started at 5:30pm. Then we came back home and I stayed up to install all the baseboards... what a task

But we finished 90%. We still have to deal with all the transition pieces, but for now our house is livable and much more presentable:

I love the new floors!

 ....but what a mess was leftover. When we prepped the house we moved everything into the garage. Well, Luke rented a table saw to cut the laminate flooring and we didn't think to cover our stuff. Three days later, EVERYTHING was covered in dust. I had to go through piece by piece and clean the dust. It was awful.