Kitchen Remodel Part Two: Walls and Flooring

Part one if you guys remember was our fridge dying and needing to be replaced ASAP. This part will discuss flooring and walls. Yes, I even covered the walls after the 2013 painting frenzy.

I got on Lowes.com after looking online at the best options for really old and filthy wood flooring. This flooring had been covered in linoleum after the home was built. We know that our house was built in 1955 but have no idea when the hardwood was covered. Regardless I felt that after the removal of the linoleum the floor never looked clean even after applying poly. It just soaked everything up and stained terribly. We were also suffering from gaps in the floor due to the wood separating. The wood had also taken quite a few spills from having German Shepherds in the past that were messy eaters/drinkers.

Anyway, long story short I ended up going with Style Selections Old World Oak. They were 4×36 pieces and I thought this would be the easiest to install and also easiest to keep clean. They were in fact water resistant and a peel and stick variety. A real selling point was that they came in at just .99 per square foot. (Side note they are on sale right now for .69 cents per square foot!!)

I wanted to make sure this flooring was down to stay, so I grabbed some multi purpose floor glue to my cart as well as some other stuff to finish some existing projects.  Moral of the story was that I didn’t EVER want to touch the flooring again and after looking at many many YouTube videos and knowing just what we were getting ourselves into I thought these were the best choices for us.

Prior to starting the flooring I cleaned A LOT. I used a shop vac to get as much dust out of the floor followed by scrubbing with a heavy duty wood floor cleaner and a strong bristle brush. I was literally on my hands and knees spraying and cleaning, then wiping and cleaning again. It didn’t come 100% clean but it for the surface to a point we could easily work.

Out of the box the flooring was easy to handle. It is light as a feather and decent thickness. I was able to handle it myself, but what I didn’t realize was how hard it would be to cut. I ended up picking the Kobalt Folding Utility Knife but still couldn’t manage on my own. In came my husband who had a lot better luck cutting.

So we were back in business with the flooring.

This is showing the first few rows. We didn’t move the stove out instead choosing to slide the flooring under as we worked because we were of course living here during the remodel.

It was at this very moment that I realized we could not cook in here while working and we took a trip to the grocery store for easy to prepare foods or things we could grill instead of moving things and trying to dodge boxes in the dining room of stuff we had packed up in the kitchen.

The Walls

The walls were a spur of the moment idea. I had never put up wallpaper in my life but found a peel and stick version on Amazon.

I bought 3 rolls of this and of course now it is on sale for $16.99. I loved the idea of reclaimed wood walls, but hated the idea of actually creating this look so in came the paper.

The reclaimed wood wallpaper (affiliate link) was the best route for time and also money. I wondered how well it would hold up or how hard it would be to install and I was actually happily surprised with everything.

I started with the smallest wall to see how hard this would be. I easily measured and cut with a rotary cutter from WalMart. The back was marked with great lines to follow and made things super simple. More of the walls will be shown in coming parts.

Coming up: Dishwasher and Sink in Part 3.

Samantha

Samantha hails from Virginia and is a proud wife to a retired Deputy Sheriff and mother to two amazing little boys named Jack & William. A veteran product reviewer; Samantha has been reviewing products for 8 years and offers high quality product reviews with original photography.