Carpet Laying 101

I am pretty handy around the house. There are many projects I have taught myself to do and really enjoy fixing things up, but I have NEVER attempted carpet before.

The sun room at our new house, which is going to house Audrey's bed and be the play room, had plain concrete floors. Brr cold, and a little hard too.

So I have been researching flooring options and how to make this room a little child friendlier. I looked at laminate flooring (which I have installed before), carpet tiles (have played with those too) and plain carpeting. The price of things was way more than I could deal with until I found a killer deal on a fairly nice, really large piece of carpeting at a garage sale last weekend. I know then that I would be figuring out how to install it.

So Saturday was the day and Josie and I decided to attack this project. We rolled the piece of carpet out to look at it and make sure there weren't any huge stains we needed to work around. Then we flipped it over to work from the back side (I thought it would be easier to cut that way, but who knows if I was right or not!)

Measure, measure, measure.... lots of measuring to make sure it was just right!

Once we had it all measured out and the picture drawn on it we started cutting it.
This was the step that killed my hands. Of course I have weak hands anyways from my health condition, but wow, that stuff hurt to cut!

We finally had the shape of the room with all of the cut outs done. Now it was time to flip it back over and give it a test run!

The fit was good, but in our excitement we forgot to sweep the floor really well. I would definitely suggest sweeping BEFORE the carpet is in the room!!

Audrey did enjoy helping with the sweeping. And that is the carpet tape on the floor. We got the floor swept up, LOTS of tape on the floor and the carpet down.

Josie and I asked for a large rolling pin, thinking that was the type of tool we needed to get the bubbles smoother.... Never in a million years did we expect Faline to decide she was a rolling pin and come in and roll on the carpet, but boy was it sure funny!

Audrey thought it looked fun in addition to being funny and joined her Aunt!

The large heavy box of laminate (which is for sale if you know anyone who needs 60 squ. ft. of flooring cheap...) with the two large girls jumping on it worked pretty good too :) Can't say we weren't creative!

All in all I think it came out well. Not perfect, but much warmer and nicer than the conceret.

And it is amazing that the carpet matches so well in this room too. Like we coordinated the carpet and paint, but in all truth we did no such thing.

Nathaniel did help some. He liked pulling the backs off of the tape a lot. He also made a good go for guy, getting us things we asked for, but mostly he like the ball breaks with Grammie best when she got there! As you can see the swing set still needs put back together... that is on today's list.

While Josie and I were finishing the carpet Faline and Audrey decided to re paint Nathaniel's desk.

This is a desk that we got off of Freecycle a few years ago that was hot pink when we got it. Re painted it at that time to match Butterfly, a dusty green color, but it was pretty grungy so we decided it needed a fresh coat of paint for the new house.

So Faline found the browns that I am doing the main areas with and started transforming the desk.

Audrey LOVES to paint and was thrilled when Faline found her painting clothes when she was getting some out of the box for herself.

Today we have lots to do on the house, but I think we made a great start yesterday and that it is going to look great after this weekend is over. Which is good since we leave on Tuesday night for UCSF!