Welcome To The Dust Mite Jungle: Time To Rid The Abode of Carpet.

I despise carpet. I hate the dirty, grimy little secrets it holds and the microscopic clans of creatures that take up residence. I know it can be cleaned, and I've done it countless times. Is it ever really clean though? Really clean? Perhaps. Probably not. Regardless, I've decided to rid the place of the dust mite jungle.

The first room I chose to do was a smaller one. There were two reasons. One is that I'd seen a really cool flooring idea on Pinterest that I wanted to try, and secondly, if I messed up, I'd only messed up small scale.


Here is the "before" of the room, complete with carpet. 

Here is what it looks like after getting rid of the futon and ripping up the carpet:

The floor was, for the most part, very inexpensive to do. I purchased furniture grade, 1/2" thick, sanded plywood, had it cut into 2 x 2 squares, and using the strongest construction quality of liquid nails available, glued them to the floor alternating the grain. Before I glued them, I cleaned and sanded the subfloor so that the new floor would lay flat and level. I also painted the room in a new color so that any paint drips would fall on the sub-floor making clean up less of a hassle.

Here is the floor prior to the multiple coats of polyurethane.

 Now look at the difference after the poly has been applied, and nice clean new molding installed.

I went back and forth to decide between water based and oil based. Both had pros and cons, but I went with water based due to time constraints. Oil based takes longer to dry, not to mention the odor. There are about 4 coats on here, and to date, it's held up very well.

These are all the pictures I'll post for this room. It was taken over by a teenager once I completed it, and no one wants to see what that room might look like!

Although I do like this floor, this will be the only room I do this in. It was fun and challenging to do, but the style is better suited to a modern style home and it works for the room it is in, but not for the entire house.

Hasta la vista dust mites. You've been kicked to the curb. Literally. To. The. Curb.