Project Green Carpet + More

Lots of progress at the house this weekend!
Here's a recap — Saturday:

14 can lights were installed into the living room ceiling by my Dad and his co-worker Alan.
On a tip from Dick Klingman, we placed then close to the edges of the room so the walls are illuminated with light as opposed to the light just hitting the floor. Great idea. And considering this is the only thing currently "new" in the house, it already makes a big difference.

During all this, Mike removed a huge pile of nails from the kitchen floor one by one – amazingly there are hardwoods under the linoleum glue, which we are working our way towards. (The picture isn't impressive but it was painstaking detail work)  He also started loading our third dumpster — at $300 per round on the dumpsters, we have learned there is an art to maximizing dumpster space...

I went over to Carolina Tile to finalize our kitchen choices with Brandy —above is the result.

After he and Alan were done with the can lights, my Dad finished up the work he'd
started last weekend – framing in the wine bar. This is off of our kitchen leading into the den,
and it will have a laundry room behind it.

And he'd knocked out a wall to make our back entrance larger —
plus giving us a needed 'mudroom' area to drop stuff when we come in the house.

And Sunday — we learned that 7 times the people = 7 times the results! Mike, my Dad and I were joined by Mike's brother William, my Mom, and my sister and her new husband Chris.

Tons of progress, thanks to the team:

Mike got the remainder of the bad linoleum out of the kitchen pantry. Again the shovel did the trick.

We got all the old junk out of the attic and swept it clean...

This was done by dropping all the trash through the exposed new tray ceiling down onto the living room floor. Of course then all that had to be carried out to the dumpster...

...Leaving an even more disgusting carpet which brought on the biggest change of the weekend—
saying farewell to the green shag carpet!

Chris and William ripped it up, rolled it, and took it to the trash where it should feel more at home.

Unfortunately in its aftermath were a million more nails and tacks that had to be pulled out by
hand and then swept up afterwards. It took the rest of us the rest of the afternoon...

After again

Here's the after!

And remember the before?

And during all this, Dad (the only actual skilled laborer in the group), finished opening the doorway leading from the kitchen and wine bar to the den. The doorway was cut wider, and then he matched the molding and replaced/centered the veneer paneling above it. We plan to paint the paneling off-white with the rest of the house.

 Above is the doorway before (from the other side)...

...and the after! This makes the whole space feel much more open.

So, off celebrate with some Mexican and margaritas. Cheers~