Flooring and Primary Bathroom
I can’t even describe how much of a difference new floors make!
We put new flooring everywhere. Bedrooms! Bathroom! Living Room! Basement!
We did the basement ourselves and let me tell you, sometimes DON’T do it yourself. DIY is not always the answer. We ended up hiring for the main floor of laminate flooring as well as carpet in the bedrooms and upstairs hallway.
I thought the feeling of doing it yourself couldn’t be beaten, and while that is absolutely true in some cases, this was not one of them. It felt so good to sit there, take a break, AND know that progress was still being made.
This is where the old closet was! It looks so good!
For the bathroom tile, we found it to be much easier and I would recommend installing it yourself. I will attach all tools and tiles we used.
We are turning the “primary” bedroom into a large on-suite bath for the new primary bedroom. The new one is actually a tad bit bigger so it worked out well!
The new primary and old primary shared most of one wall. So, in order to make it an on-suite bathroom, more demolition was required. (Much more careful demolition though).
We mapped out the new door, drew an outline, and marked where to avoid (avoid electricity and studs). We had to cut around the electricity, move it to the side, and cap the ends. Once that was taken care of, we used a Sawzall to follow the door's outline.
We still need to put the door on but we are waiting to do so until all the items are brought through the doorway, we wouldn’t want to mess up a nice new door!
So, once we completed that, we removed the carpet and set down a concrete slab base all around the room. We then went along row by row using a medium mortar and placing the tiles. It was so satisfying to scoop up the mortar and slap it on the ground. We made sure to place spacers in between each tile, about ⅛” thick.
This stuff dries quickly! If you see a mistake, go back immediately, not “after I’m done with this row.” One of our friends works for a general contractor and told us that it looked pretty good but we did spread on the mortar just a little too thick. Although, it was better that it was too thick rather than too thin. We just have to remove the access mortar before using the grout in between the tiles.
We are, overall, very satisfied with how all the flooring turned out. It really made it feel like home so much faster than I expected.
I urge you to hire someone if you are on the fence about doing it. We knew we wanted to do tile but weren’t sure about wanting to do the laminate or carpet. We spent 3 days working on a small room of laminate before deciding to hire someone to do it.
You aren’t any less cool to admit you need or even just want a professional to do something.
DIY or don’t! Just do you.
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