Our first DIY project – laminate flooring in Ben’s basement office

In addition to moving in, buying new furniture, and unpacking, we got CRAZY and decided to completely overhaul Ben’s office before he moved anything into it.

Here is the BEFORE picture:

So this room is in the basement, and has no windows. The dark brown wall color was just not working at all. It felt like a cave. Also, the carpet was old and gross, so it had to go as well.

I started by painting the entire room, walls and ceiling, with Sherwin William’s Stucco in a satin finish. Aren’t my painting clothes so sexy?

Ah, so much better! Look how much brighter the room already looks! In addition to the paint I also swapped out the can light bulbs for some “daylight” bulbs to make the room less yellow and more bright. (If you are curious what that big wooden square on the wall is, it’s a door to the crawl space.)

Once the walls were painted, we replaced the floor. It was a busy day to say the least.

We opted to do a laminate floor instead of carpet because Ben likes to be able to roll his office chair around with ease. Once we pulled up the carpet and pad, I sat on the floor pulling up tiny staples. After that we swept and vacuumed the room really well.

Believe it or not, neither of us has ever laid a laminate floor. Shocking, I know! We just haven’t had a reason to ever install one. After reading the instructions on the box of laminate flooring I realized we would need a moisture barrier. We picked up this one at our local hardware store.

We bought all our laminate at Costco.

Installation was straight forward enough, but getting the first few rows started was a little tricky because the walls aren’t perfectly square.

Instead of walking up the stairs and out to the front yard about twenty thousand times to cut each plank to fit, we set up the saw in the basement storage room. It made the job so much easier.

Almost done! Looking pretty good if I do say so.

As soon as we were finished with the floor we were so excited and immediately started moving furniture and boxes into the room before taking any “AFTER” photos. Doh! Now the room is a mess so I will show you the updated floor with the furniture as soon as we are done unpacking in there.