Next Step: Carpet Removal

We have now begun ripping the carpet up in our living room and hallway to make way for our new laminate wood floors. This process hasn't been as tedious as the dining room and kitchen laminate flooring-which is a nice change. The hardest part of the carpet removal was moving the furniture out of the room and removing the tack board. We have one small carpet piece left down the hallway and we'll be finished with everything. Eventually we will put new hardwood in the master bedroom, but we're going to wait till our finances build back up some.

Since our dishwasher and kitchen table and chairs are now in the garage and our oven is in the middle of the kitchen, we are making very easy meals and using anything plastic that we can. haha! Our house is completely rearranged so we've been hanging out in our bonus room upstairs or just watching TV from the bedroom. Bo is even completely confused with the arrangement because his bowls aren't in the same spot. He's so confused that I found pancakes wrapped in plastic wrap in his bed this morning. We had thrown these away and I guess he got up in the middle of the night, took them out of the trash and brought them back to his bed-uneaten! I wish I would have had time to take a picture because it was hilarious!

So far i've been handling the craziness very well. I am somewhat (ok more than somewhat) obsessive compulsive when it comes to everything being put away and in it's correct spot. And right now there's not a single room in our home that isn't in complete shambles. I've been taking it/the mess one day at a time, but i've been really good about not letting it bother me all that much. Of course, it wouldn't be so easy without Johnny. He is so amazing and definitely helps me keep things in perspective. He understands my "issues" and helps keep things as organized as possible and picked up--granted he's not really a "messy" person by any means either, just not as OCD as myself. He has also helped remind me that this is only a temporary situation. We both feel so fortunate to be able to have these "extras" and it is definitely worth the time, effort, energy and.....mess..... it takes.

All in all, our first home improvement project has been a complete success! (Hope I don't jinx us....) We're both so anxious to see the end result we can hardly stand it!