Playroom Makeover!

  It has been about 8 months since we moved into our new home.  The first 8 months were dedicated to unloading boxes and organizing our home.  Lately, I have been getting the itch to paint, decorate and update!  So… first up- our playroom.  To me it is not just a playroom.  I am an in-home childcare provider and our playroom is where we spend most of our day.  Since, I am in there so much, I am finding all kinds of things I want to change!!

  First up, the floor.  See that door in the photo below?  It goes out to the backyard- love!  But, the problem is… dirt, sand, leaves- YUCK!  There is no room for a rug between the door and the carpet, so this left me vacuuming way more than I wanted to.  Plus, I needed a carpet free place to do art projects.

 

And so it begins… my awesome Hubster cut up the carpet (notice the ‘beverage’ needed to complete all the projects I dream up!).

We borrowed a chalk line from my dad to get the line perfectly straight.  Then we cut and pulled up the carpet and the padding.

Here is the flooring we chose.  It is actually vinyl plank flooring by Allure in Country Pine (found exclusively at The Home Depot).  I wanted something durable, easy to clean and easy to lay.  We first thought about laying tile, but the thought of broken tiles due to toys being dropped did not seem like the best idea…plus the expense.  So, my dad introduced us to Allure flooring and we love it.  You can even pull up one plank if a plank gets damaged. 

This type of flooring is a floating floor because it does not actually attach to the floor, which means no prep needed to the floor underneath.  On each plank there are grip strips that grip to each other, rather than the concrete, or any other type of flooring you may lay this over.

So, how hard was it to lay?  It wasn’t.  It could be cut with a utility knife and was very easy to piece together.  Plus, if you mess up…just pull it apart and try again!

After laying the flooring we needed a transition strip to go from the new plank flooring to the carpet.  We found a Carpet Gripper strip at Home Depot.  First, we cut the pad from the carpet (that meets the new flooring) back 1 inch.  We did this so it would ease in the transition of the high carpet to the low flooring.  Then, Hubster drilled holes in the concrete to screw the transition strip down {horrible noise!}.  Once, the transition strip was screwed down we were almost done!

We ended up borrowing a carpet kicker to get the carpet tight into the transition strip.  Then, we used a mallet to get that carpet to stick in the strip.  Then, Hubster used a hammer and a piece of wood to bang the lip of transition strip over the carpet.

WHALLA!

 

We even did the playroom bathroom, which was super easy {more on the bathroom to come}.  Just put this flooring down right over the linoleum.

 

* The materials in this post were NOT provided by Home Depot for review (wish they would have been!).  I simply just wanted to share our experience with this flooring. 

 

Ashley