Here is our before picture of the guest bedroom when we purchased the house...
Next we picked out a beautiful green (my favorite) paint color and replaced the old light fixture and fan with a brand new flush mount modern fixture.
Then after the paint and fixtures were all updated, the next big decision was what to do on the floors. Carpet, tile, laminate, hardwoods...?.... We have both always loved the gorgeous rich luxurious look of hardwood floors so we decided to do some price checking around town. We were pleasantly surprised that hardwood floors weren't extravagantly more expensive than carpet, in fact, when you consider the price for installation of a nice carpet (something we weren't sure we could do ourselves) it actually turns out about the same as the hard wood!
So, we went exploring several times to our local Home Depot, Lumber Liquidators and some other hard wood flooring stores. We brought home a few samples and compared them to the existing wood trim we have in our house. Unfortunately we weren't really wowed by any of them. So, we kept looking online and discovered a beautiful maple wood that we were absolutely in love with.
I immediately ordered a sample and when it came in the mail and I opened the package my heart palpitated with glee! It was perfection!! AND within our price range! We ordered the wood and the underlayment and just waited with anticipation. About a week later Kenny picked up our boxes of wood and once we got them home we opened them right up to acclimate to the environment, but more so that we could see them and just drool *grins*
Next came some very important prep work. We cleaned off the concrete where the carpet and carpet pad had been, removed the carpet tack strips and Kenny, with a very special set of skills, gently removed all the base boards.
We duct taped the seams of the underlayment, as per the package directions and were ready to go!
So, from there on out Kenny was the saw expert. I measured and marked and he made every cut with ease *grins*
We worked and worked adding row after row. The closet and doorway required a skillful hand and lots of measuring. This time Kenny got to use my Dad's table saw to plane the boards down to the proper width.

Finally, our hard work was finished and we just stopped, stood back and admired the most gorgeous dark maple hardwood floors we'd ever seen.
