But now I think I’m done.

Not because there aren’t a gazillion things I could be doing.  (Dear neighbours: please please please disregard our front flowerbeds.  I promise to be a far better gardener next summer.)  (And dear dustbunnies: please stop multiplying so quickly in the corners.)  But because I just don’t have the energy right now.

It’s a super hard thing for me to admit.  I’m definitely feeling a little defeated.

That said, I had two joyously productive moments yesterday: I finished a couple of tiny little projects.  And I’m quite proud.

First, I swapped out the front entryway doormat for a new one I picked up at HomeSense (oh how I love HomeSense!) a few days ago.  I went from this stripey snore-fest…

(Obviously file footage, since I’ve since painted those super ugly green walls!)

…to this…

Admittedly, it’s not a massive change, but it makes me happy to think that any post-baby visitors will have a much nicer mat to land upon when they walk through my front door.

Project number two involved dressing a long-naked window in our living room.  When we moved in, the previous owners had left some rather hideous and dirty-looking blinds on this window (which I promptly removed.)  I was left with this…

Unfortunately, and rather oddly, this window frame is positioned unusually high – it almost reaches the ceiling (I’m guessing that at some point someone dropped the ceiling in this room to run new, non-knob-and-tube wiring through the house since other ceilings on the main floor are a good foot taller.)  As a result, I’ve hummed and hawed over what to do with this window for several months now.  Yesterday, I had Sweetie hang a curtain rod right at ceiling height.  And yesterday, I finally added curtains to this window.

And today, I am very happy with the result.  The curtains (which are Ikea’s lovely Matilda panels, btw) don’t hide the ugliness of the window itself (see all that stuff on the window?  Spray foam.  Between the panes of glass.  Yup, some not-so-bright but likely well-meaning previous home owner decided that this would be a good solution to winter draftiness.)  (For the record, spray foam between the window panes is never ever a good – or, at least, nice looking – solution to draftiness.)  But the curtains do make the window look better (which this soon-to-be momma is content with for now, until we find a way to disassemble the window and scrape out the offending foam.)

So there.  Those are my two most recent tiny little accomplishments at the old mauve house.  Significant?  Not particularly.  But I at least feel like I’m still making some progress, despite that my body is most definitely slowing down.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me for a moment (or two), this momma-to-be desperately needs a nap.   :)

Yep.  That happened this weekend.  I was so sad.

Luckily, I have another trip to Ikea planned for the not-so-distant future (since baby needs a dresser/change table for his or her little room, and handsome Hemnes seems to fit the bill) so we’ll pick up the remaining (and sadly missed) drapery hardware bits during that dresser-buying mission.  In the meantime, however, my bay window looks rather naked.  (Although the cats are pretty happy with the curtain-less and completely unobstructed view – cats don’t really understand, or care for, drapery.)

But the weekend wasn’t entirely filled with drapery doom and gloom!  While staring (woefully) at my naked dining room windows, I noticed that a piece of our (quite shoddily installed) laminate flooring had at some point come loose.

So I gave it a wee wiggle.  And it moved.  And, in fact, it came completely out.  And look (look!) what I found underneath…

Yep.  That, there, is hardwood.  Not original-to-the-house beautiful 100 year old wide-plank-holy-awesomeness-pine-or-mahogany-or-something-equally-amazing hardwood, of course, but hardwood nonetheless.

I did a little happy dance.  In front of my naked big bay windows.  At the exact same moment that my neighbour walked by with his dog, of course.  (I’m pretty sure the neighbours think we’re a bit odd.)

So our newest question?  How far does the flooring extend?  Is there hardwood under all of the laminate flooring in our living room/dining room?  Or only under part?  With the house being quite old (and without knowing what the original floorplan here looked like) the laminate could very well be hiding big ugly scars from walls that were removed and additions that were additioned over the years.  Afterall, why else would you cover hardwood flooring with laminate?  If it’s simply scratched up, hardwood can be refinished.  And I’m not at all afraid of a few scratches.  We’ve had this sort of narrow-plank hardwood flooring in both of our previous homes, and age-related scratches and dings just add a little character (if you ask me.)  They scream “This house was well-loved in past years by families blessed with excited children and lively dinner parties.”  If we reveal an expanse of hardwood underneath the laminate, regardless of the shape it’s in, I’ll be one happy girl.

Now, the hard part.  Finding the courage to start ripping all of the existing flooring up.  It’s one of those jobs that once started, can’t be stopped.  It’s also one of those jobs that’ll require a really quickly executed Plan B if it turns out that the flooring underneath isn’t usable for some reason.

Maybe we’ll save that for another (much braver) day.  In the meantime, I’m leaving that one small piece of laminate flooring pulled up as a reminder that something really amazing could be hiding underneath all the ugliness.  Afterall, it was that same hope of hidden beauty that convinced us to buy our old mauve house in the first place.  :)

DONE.

Here’s the progression (for anyone who’s visual, like me.)

I started with this…

…which (thankfully!) turned into this…

…Sweetie then added quarter round, which looked like this…

…then I caulked and painted everything, leaving a sparkly new (and finished) (and not blue) kitchen floor, that looks like this…

Am I happy much?  YES.  Have a already christened my new floor with a silly little happy dance?  Of course.  Does this occasion call for a big bottle of wine?  Absolutely.

(Although pretty much any occasion is a good excuse for wine, if you ask me.)

One more thing done off our big ol’ to-do pre-listing list.  And one major item completed from the list of things I’ve been meaning to do since we moved into this humble little abode 2.5 years ago.

Progress, how ever slow, is still progress.  :)

And it’s not blue.

And there are no giant ugly gouges marring its loveliness.

And it looks clean and fresh and sparkly and new.  :)

See?

Sigh.  Yep.  I’m a happy girl.  Despite taking nearly THREE whole afternoons to lay (Dear Allure flooring folk: while I adore your product, it’s not necessarily as easily installed as you claim for those of us who are a tad OCD and really want all the seams to line up all nice and neat and such) and despite that it’s not my much adored hickory-look floor (oh, how I wanted that hickory-look floor!) it’s still way better than the 1980′s era flooring-monstrosity that hides underneath.

And, most importantly, it’s not blue.

Should we do a quick Before and After?  Likely.  Just because I’m super ridiculously proud like that.

The rather depressing BEFORE (with ugly 1980′s peel and stick blue tiles and a whole lot of ickiness)…

AFTER (pretty and clean and NOT BLUE)…

What’s that you say?  Why yes – that IS a pretty new yellow tea towel (thank you for noticing!)  I’m quite sure that Galen over at President’s Choice made that specifically for me because he knew yellow would look nice with my amazing new floor (and I think he was right.)

And see that bowl of lemons?  Yep.  That’s me practicing my fancy-pants house-staging tactics.  Snazzy eh?  Because I would never randomly just leave a bowl of fruit sitting out on my counter like that (since, well, I don’t eat much fruit, and it’d likely be all moldy and gross by the time I actually remembered it’s there.  Which would make me sad.)  (Unless we’re talking bananas here.  Bananas are always a countertop fruit.  But they don’t look nearly as pretty as lemons do in a bowl.)

So what’s missing?  Quarter round.  That goes on next (thanks to Sweetie’s stellar carpentry skills.)  And then the floor drama will officially be over.  Forever.  Hooray!  Tada!

Or at least until the next house.  (Teehee.)

That there is my new kitchen floor going down.  Finally.  Fiiiiiiiinally.  (Insert big huge ridiculously silly happy dance HERE.)  It’s amazing how the rush to get your house listed for spring (aka prime house-selling season) will suddenly move any much-deliberated but never-initiated projects into fast-forward mode.  Yep – two and a half years of griping about our ugly kitchen floor (and much ongoing debate over what to replace it with) later, and we’re finally making ‘er pretty.

Progress rocks.  :)

Sweetie removed all the quarter round for me last weekend…

And then I patched the icky holes in the old peel and stick tiles…

And then floor-laying officially began!  I started yesterday with this…

Which then grew into this…

And then eventually became this (much later in the day and under ugly artificial light)…

I finally called it a night when I had enough flooring down that I could move the appliances back into place.

If you’ve been following my (ongoing) floor drama at all, you might notice that this isn’t the floor I originally wanted.  Like, at all.  I had big lovely hickory-look flooring plans.  However all that quickly changed when I found a batch of flooring on clearance.  Yep – I went cheap and cheerful on my resale-bound floor.  Regularly $47 per box (with each box covering 24 square feet) I found four boxes of this particular floor (Allure’s Resilient Flooring in Patina) in Home Depot’s clearance pile for $30 each.  And even after supplementing my clearance boxes with one additional box at full price (since four boxes would have given me exactly enough to do the floor without any extra for errors or weird cuts or things like that) the whole floor will cost about $170 in the end (plus a whole lot of elbow grease), which seems pretty darn reasonable, if you ask me!  It’s not exactly what I wanted (and if we were planning to stay in this house, I would have committed to my beloved, but pricier, hickory-look floor) but for resale?  It’ll do.  :)

Assuming I give it a good solid effort, I’ll likely (hopefully!) have the rest of the floor down today.  While it’s not quite as easy to put down as the good folk at Allure would like you to believe, it’s not particularly difficult either.  It’s just time consuming.  And a little finicky when it comes to making sure the seams are all tight.

Looking very (very!) forward to finally (finally!!!) checking “make kitchen floor look much much prettier and way less blue” off my to-do list.  Next pre-listing project in line: countertops.  :)

But then Ms Stager (who, despite my grumblings, was really really nice) turned to our kitchen.  And, of course, she scowled a little while she looked at our floor and counters.  At which point, to put her obviously distressed mind at ease, I proudly brought out my little floor sample (Allure Trafficmaster flooring in Hickory), and my chosen countertop sample too (Formica’s pretty Ivory Kashmire), and waited for her approval to rain over us for a second time.

Her approval did not come.  In fact, she poo-poo-ed my countertop choice, saying it wasn’t gray enough or dark enough or something equally disappointing.  We needed something with more grays or something slate-y, she said, to go with all the grays in our kitchen and living room.  We could install my beloved Ivory Kashmire granite-look Formica in our next house, she quipped, but here?  Here we needed to work on resale.

I won’t lie: my heart broke into a gazillion pieces.  For anyone who knows me well, I’m decision-dysfunctional.  Committing to anything is a long and tedious process, normally involving hours upon hours of research and debate over various options and careful weighing of pros and cons and alternatives.

Yep.  Ms Stager told me that, despite my careful consideration, I had chosen wrong.

Sigh.  I was sad.

So I wandered back to the drawing board with her tips fresh in my head.  I visited all the big box home stores in our area for ideas and inspiration.  And, after much deliberation, here’s what I’ve come up with…

…our same Allure flooring choice in Hickory (just because I love it so much, and also because it should be easy for me to put down on my own some day while Sweetie is at work) and Jamocha Granite laminate countertops from Formica.  It’s not EXACTLY what I wanted for my pretty little kitchen, but it could work.  And I think it could even, possibly, look really nice.  Perhaps Ms Stager was right.

So, there’s your update on where things are so far!  How fitting to find ourselves once again standing in the kitchen, trying to make decisions.  Hopefully this time we’ve got it right.  :)

Today’s kitchen flooring option for consideration?

Checkerboard.

Yep.  I’m thinking about going with classic black and white tiles now.  Why?  In all honesty?  Cost.  I found peel and stick solid black and solid white linoleum (or whatever peel and stick-ers are made out of) tiles at Home Depot a couple days ago for about 50 cents each.  At that price, I could redo my entire floor for about 50 buckeroonies!  As you can imagine, my head has been a-whirlin with the possibilities.

Just to remind you of how dire my floor situation is, here’s a shot of my kitchen as of this morning (in all her ugly-floored glory)…

I’m not necessarily looking at the peel and stick checkerboard option as a permanent solution, but it would be a super cheap fix while we’re saving up for (and, well, deciding on) whatever our permanent floor will be.  And it would be EASY to put down.  If I don’t go on a diagonal with the tiles (or anything fancy-pants like that) and just stick to a plain old grid pattern, I could simply use the existing peel and stick tiles as a guide.  I’m guessing…  two hours tops to put the entire floor down.  Maybe.  If that.  We’re talking instant gratification to the tune of $50.

BUT, (as always) I have some reservations.

Reservation #1: I’ve read that the checkboard pattern shows EVERY spec of dirt that falls on the floor.  And I can imagine this is very true (particularly with the white squares.)  Not that I’m against religious sweeping and washing of my floors – just call me Susie Homemaker because I’m a little OCD about that sort of thing.  But I’m wondering if floors that show every single crumb (or piece of cat fur) that falls might push me over the edge.

Reservation #2: My kitchen is PRETTY.  And I want it to stay a pretty little spot (it makes me happy!)  The black and white checkerboard might be a little too… busy and loud for me.  The last thing I want is a floor that screams “Helloooo!  Welcome to our house!  Look at me!  I’m a checkerboard floor!” every time someone walks through our front door.  (Nobody likes being hollered at by an overbearing floor.)

Reservation #3: Maybe I should just hold out for the floors I really want (you know, the ones that I haven’t yet decided on) rather than settling for a temporary fix for the time being.  Although, that said, with potentially only a two hour and a 50 loonie investment, why not make things BETTER for the next little bit while waiting for the flooring I really want?

Hmmmm…  Sigh.  I’m undecided.  Of course.

But, in lieu of an actual decision, here are some black and white floors that I do indeed love!

From Brown Button…

…this gives me hope that a black and white checkered floor could indeed look serene (and not screamy!) in my space.  :)

And I love this diagonally-laid floor, courtesy of the Marion House Book…

…coupled with the older cupboards, this makes me think a checkerboard floor could in fact work in my space!

And here is a different take on the traditional checkerboard pattern that I love, from my fellow Canucks over at The Sweetest Digs…

…they used the exact same inexpensive peel-em-and-stick-em tiles that I’m contemplating from Home Depot.  It’s not a traditional checkerboard pattern, but I absolutely adore how their floor turned out!

So…  all that loveliness aside, will a black and white floor be in my future?  I’m undecided.  (Yes, big surprise.)  I adore all of the above floors (A LOT) but I’m just not sure if it’ll look as nice in my space.

(Do you see yet another kitchen floor post coming in the future?  Yep.  Me too.  This is definitely not the last time we’ll be chatting about my floor…)

…and realized that this lovely gray, yellow and teal rug (courtesy of Urban Outfitters) would look pretty darn good in my little gray kitchen.  Which, consequently, would mean bidding the red accents adieu.  And, well, maybe replacing them with something… sunnier.

Just as a reminder (just because my kitchen, even sans new rug, makes me happy!) here’s what I’m starting with…

Don’t get me wrong – I actually rather like the red.  But see the bananas in the background?  See how pretty the yellow looks against the gray?  Yep.  I’m thinking it’s most definitely a sign.  (While I don’t necessarily listen to my friends, when fruit makes a suggestion I’m all ears.)

And really, all I’d have to do is switch out the carpet (and I’ve already found the replacement!) and the tea towels (Etsy has lots of cheap and cheerful yellow tea towels) and maybe the print above the stove too (I really do miss having a mirror over my stove, so I’m thinking I’d like to try that again…  maybe one with a white wooden frame this time.)

And, if I’m feeling extra fancy, maybe I’ll get a yellow kettle.  Maybe.  :)

My other motive for the new rug?  I’m kinda hoping that the teal colour in the rug will make the icky teal peel-and-stick tile floors look a little better.  Maybe even like they were a deliberate and fashionable choice or something like that (even though we all know I can’t wait to replace them.  Eventually.)

It’s wishful thinking, I know.

Regardless, my kitchen is a happy place, and yellow is most definitely a happy colour!  All in all it seems like a pretty good match to me.  And I’m guessing that my bananas would likely agree.

Need a reminder?  It has been a good, oh, couple of weeks since I’ve obsessed about my kitchen.  Here’s the current state of my wee little kitchen (please note the uuugly floor!)

Gross eh?

So what’s this big ongoing internal dialogue all about?  Painted plywood floors.  Again.  Yeppers.  Just when I thought I’d made a decision on which flooring would be most cheap and most cheerful for my humble little kitchen, I saw a Pinterest pic that made me pine for something else.  But rather than the patterned floors I drooled over the last time I pondered plywood potential, I’ve now switched gears (me? really?  go figure…) and my newest obsession is checkerboard.

It kinda started with this floor from Better Homes and Gardens (which, if you’ll recall, was indeed a contender for my floor future the last time we all discussed this)…

It’s just so PRETTY!  And that gray on the walls could very well be the Stonington Gray that’s on our kitchen walls.  Which is perfect alongside those white cupboards (hey – we have white cupboards too!)  Yep.  This is the exact colour scheme of our current kitchen.  (Well, sorta…  If you completely disregard our sad looking countertops.)  And just look at how pretty and serene that all looks with the checkerboard floor.  Sigh.

I’m a little obsessed.

Here’s a second gray and white checkboard floor from Northern Light.  Just as lovely.  The pattern is a classic, like the black and white staple, but the gray and white is less in-your-face…

And here’s a third (yes really!) gray and white sample (this one via Southern Living.)  (I might truly be onto something with this whole gray and white obsession!)  This one is ALSO lovely…

And then there are indeed non-gray options.  For example, could I interest you in a little yellow perhaps?  A la Makin’ It in Memphis …

Yep.  If a floor could be happy, I bet it’d look just like that!  (Albeit, Makin’ It In Memphis’ floor is genuine marmoleum, not painted, but a yellow and white painted checkerboard would be equally cheery methinks!)

I might very well be sold on the checkerboard floors.  Especially the gray and cream versions (again, it’s just so pretty with the gray wall paint.)  (Please excuse me while I swoon.)  What’s holding me back?  The truth?  It looks like a lot of work.  Not necessarily the painting part.  I’m sure that’s pretty straight forward.  It’s the TAPING that looks like quite the chore.  (And, being both slightly OCD and somewhat of a perfectionist, I’m guessing this is the type of project that could truly push my buttons.)

So will I have painted checkerboard floors in my happy little 1940s kitchen one day?  Perhaps.  Once I’m a gazillion percent sure that it’s really the right choice for my kitchen.  Since, well, I’m only going to (very precisely) tape off forty-seven 12″ squares once.

OK.  Twice.  Tops.

Ah.  There she is.  In all her ugly-floored glory.

Remember this post where I ooooohed and aaaaahed about how much I looooove butchers’ block countertops?  Yep.  Me too.

But then, THEN I discovered inexpensive easily-installed hickory-look Allure flooring.  Which led me to thinking (in THIS post) that maybe a black countertop could be in my future, a la my inspiration image (since, in my head at least, wood-look floors plus a wood countertop just seemed a little too… woody.)

But yesterday, I flopped.  Or flipped.  Or flip flopped.  Whatever.  I changed my mind (let’s go with that!) yet again.  You see, I found a post about painted plywood floors.  Yeppers.  And after just a few seconds with my buddies at Pinterest, I’d found a plethora of painted plywood prettiness.

Need proof?  Lookie here…

Painted and stencilled plywood from Creek Bed Threads.  Sweetie and I could totally do this.  Love!!!

Or there’s this one too (from smart the folk at Back to Domestics.)  Also painted plywood.  Also stencilled.  Also fantastic!

These are actual hardwood floors, I think (not plywood) (brave souls!) but I looooove the gray and cream checkerboard pattern (from Better Homes and Gardens)…

Oooooh.  And I adore this honeycomb patterned painted floor from Apartment Therapy…

And just look (omg LOOK!) at this simple and lovely painted plank plywood floor from Frugal Farmhouse Design…

Swoon, eh?

So I brought this all up with Sweetie (who, being a boy, is indeed a big fan of plywood) and after a brief chat and a few pics, he’s on board.  It’d be even cheaper than the inexpensive Allure hickory-look flooring I’d found.  And, well, despite that the Allure flooring claims to be easy-peasy to put down (and I’ve read many testimonials agreeing with this) my experience with installing it at our last house was neither easy nor peasy at all.  Once it was down, it was awesome.  But getting it all down with the seams snug and everything stuck together with the uber sticky glue strips while cats were circling helping the whole time?  Bad combo.  So painted plywood is my new plan, even if just temporarily (ie: a few years) until we can afford nicer flooring for the kitchen (at which point we’ll have a nice sturdy plywood subfloor to lay everything on!)  The perfect plan?  I think so!  :)

And you know what this all means, right?  If we go with the plywood floors, my butchers’ block countertops are back in.  At least for now.  Unless I change my mind again.  Which could happen.  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  We’ll see.  (Earlier perch reference?  Yup.  That’s me.)