Don't underestimate a girlfriends abilities. She gives me an opportunty to toss out ideas that I've had for years and then makes subtle suggestions that fit better. Kinda breaks it to me gently. The only floor that is hardwood is the dining room. The boards were probably prefinished and have a beveled edge etc, stained a golden honey type of color. Overall they don't look good, even by themselves. While Janet did help pick out the color of the laminate, we didn't have any with us to compare. Yesterday with an open floor plan, she suggested tossing some on the floor to see how it would look. Verdict is.. up comes the dining room floor and the whole area will be laminate. Once seeing them next to each other, it looked horrible. No transistion strip would have helped and there wasn't enough of a contrast etc.
Dining room chandelier came down as well. It wasn't connected yet and was going to get changed because Janet and Geoff decided that brass was not a good color.
Friday most of the sheetrock went up. The small wall with the electrical is all that'* left to be rocked. A pantry was found that will be the closest match (door wise to the existing cabinets) and reasonable in pricing. It is unfinished, the Randman will be called in for staining expertise.
Saturday was a mini meet of sorts.
Sunday Janet was trying to keep me relaxing and somehow after she left I was right back at it. Cut back the dining room/kitchen wall. It is a perfect 1-2 inches from the counter edge. I then cursed the builder/sheetrocker again as I ran the wiring and box for the dining room light. More sheetrock in the walls. Overall running that stuff was easy with the new drill, new electrical snake and recent rotozip. The old drill wouldn't turn a brand new 1" electrical boring bit. Put up a couple pieces of rock behind the fridge.
Time to pick up some batteries for the camera for more pictures.
Drill: http://www.milwaukeetool.com/tools/t...50-rpm/0299-20

I think you will be real happy going all laminate. East to clean, looks great, etc. I did all laminate, but kept the living/ dining room originally carpeted. Once the transition strip in installed, it costs a lot to remove it later, in my case I kept the strip in to save money.

Congrats on catching it before the floor was fully down!

Yesterday Janet was on the hunt for a new dining room light fixture. She has some ideas and hopefully we'll narrow things down soon. Although it'* not really horribly dim with the open floor plan, we will want better lighting.

Last night.. I meant to take pictures and ran out of time. Mike had come in during the day and finished off all the sheetrocking, put up the corner beads and made the sofet that will be over the new cabinet. :Thumbs This left little for me to do. I headed to Home Depot for a couple buckets of joint compound, two gallons of ceiling paint and more plastic and edging tape. Got the plastic up and scraped the texture off the ceilings in kitchen/dining room.
Today I'll give Derek a call, he'll be doing all the joint compound/sanding to finish up the walls.

There'* a list of things left to do:

1. Order the HDMI wall plates, when the moulding is pulled to install the floor, the cable will be run into the wall like the other rooms. Later down the road when it'* time for a new TV, I'll extend wires into the wall to be up behind the TV mount like the other rooms. :Thumbs
2. Pick up more laminate flooring After the dining room decision we probably need 3-4 more boxes. Costco didn't have more laminate flooring in the right color last night. Luckily they'll be getting a shipment in the next week. After the dining room decision we probably need 3-4 more boxes. The nice thing about such a large area is that there will be fewer cuts and it should move very fast.
3. Purchase and stain pantry cabinet. Hoping to pick it up before Saturday for Randman Consulting Services LLC to check out and make staining suggestions for matching to the existing cabinets.
4. Take up dining room/kitchen/living room floors.
5. Paint, hopefully we can touch up/match the existing color and not redo the entire room/hallway/stairway at this point.
6. Build island and relocate heater into it. Putting in electrical, having a two level for an eating area with a couple stools. Figure out counter top for island.
7. Reverse fridge doors and fix broken water line to ice maker. It was beautiful when it broke and started spewing water across the floor. Down the road, I really want a fridge with crushed ice/water on the door. Not sure why, always wanted it though. So ... somewhere in the future is a newer fridge that matches the rest of the appliances (white).
8. Get large area rug for living room. Costco has some amazing looking rugs at good prices. (yes..I do get a rebate on total purchases )
9. New lights for dining room/living room.
10. Put recessed lighting into kitchen on a dimmer. I ran the wire for this and left an opening in the switch box when I was doing the electrical.
After all that ...I'm sure there will be decorating, new curtains and all that stuff that I consider to be Janet'* department. I'm happy to do the work, just don't ask me to pick stuff out. I'd probably hang engine parts on the walls as decoration.

I arrived home to a surprise yesterday about 10pm. Drywall taping has begun!
Corner above hallway
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Wall by kitchen/dining room

Sofet over future site of new pantry cabinet
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Kitchen into dining room ceiling
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Where the laminate beams are hiding
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Hoping that the worst of the dust etc is complete by Friday. :Thumbs

No mud work on Friday. Ceiling should be sprayed as popcorn on Monday. Meanwhile more progress, dining room flooring needed to come up.
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That flooring looks exactly like hardwood..... very nice.

Mike.. that was the tear up of the hardwood..

Ooops..... sorry.....

I need batteries for the real camera, the cell just doesn't handle light that well.
Ceiling is done
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Walls may be done today
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Got started on pulling up the kitchen floor. Need a multitool for cutting along the edge of the cabinets.
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wow you really opened up! i never seen the before shots only the day i came. very nice!