Home Improvement - I

My dad is quite the handyman. He can be a carpenter (e.g. he built a nice desk and shelves for me when I was a teenager), a painter, a builder, even a bit of an electrician at times. When he came to visit for a month back in 2002 when my oldest son was born he was happy and busy with various projects. First, he removed the almost 30 years old (yellow) wall paper from the kitchen, painted the walls in two tones of green I picked, matching with the pretty border I chose, and put new flooring:
Here's part of my old kitchen (not the current one). I think the cabinets are too dark (I love light or "natural" colored wood), but I adored the new stove we put in - I miss it so much! We also (dumbly) replaced the ancient (yellow) dishwasher for one of the "better" ones (with two of those turning things that spread the water) - when we should have saved at least U$100 by putting in a cheaper one. Lucky new owner. At least we didn't replace the fridge, which was not really great (but we did have to buy a new fridge for here, since strangely [for us] here in PA many houses don't come with fridges).

This photo offers a better view of the wall and border, since it was taken on the night we were moving (you can see some of the mess).

Then, still back in 2002, with the help of my mom and my hubby, my dad removed the old caramel color carpet from the living room and they put in "oak" laminate flooring. The following year (2003) he painted the finished basement. In 2004 we basically concentrated in de-cluttering so we could sell the house and move.

Ever since we moved here we have wanted to put laminate flooring in the living room. Even though the house is only 4 years old, the carpet has some stains (the previous owners had a big dog and cats) and is completely torn by the basement door (the dog again). We started removing the capets on Saturday night and we had to do it carefully, particularly with the padding since we decided to save it to put it in the basement (if we do get around finishing it like we plan to).

In the pictures above you can see the how the room looked when we moved in (2004) and when we started removing the carpet on Saturday (that's my dad there rolling up the padding). Last year when I spent two months in Brazil, hubby painted it this warm peach color.

The funnest part for me was removing the wooden piece under the "vinyl" flooring in front of the door. I thoroughly enjoyed removing each single nail. Removing the staples from the carpet padding was not as fun, but I did it quite quickly and efficiently.

The house was a huge mess last night, but I think it was /is worth it!

The picture below was taken late in the afternoon yesterday. We did some more progress (and I already took many more pictures), and tonight we're planning to finish.
I'll post more pictures of the finished results later, OK?