{ Good-bye Stinky Vinyl }

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! 

We enjoyed lots of family time which is rare these days. We got to spend time with Mark's family and my family and even had a little of our own family time too on Christmas morning. 

Here's a quick shot of us all in the morning in our pj's.

We've been jumping all over the house this week, from one project to another...sometimes in the bathroom, sometimes upstairs, and currently we are working in the kitchen. 

Recently Mark removed the bulk head that was above the old cabinets, he took down the beam that stretched across the kitchen and put it up into the rafters so that the kitchen ceiling will be all the same height.  He also installed a new window in the kitchen and ripped up the old vinyl flooring too. 

Here's a reminder shot of the kitchen before the beam and bulk head were removed

The beam was placed there because that was where the original house ended, so when the tiny kitchen edition was put on way back when they had to put in the beam for support. I didn't even know it was possible to raise up a beam but Mark is a genius and did it in a couple hours. 

He had to put up a temporary wall to hold the weight while he removed the beam and reworked it back up into the rafters. 

He tore apart the ceiling to open it up for the beam to be put into place. 

Next up was the window installation.

See the old stove vent in the photo below.

That came out and the window went in it's place. 

We put a window here because this will be directly above the kitchen sink. As you can see below now there are two windows close together but the old window is coming out and there will eventually be a door in it's place when we do the breeze-way and garage addition next year sometime. 

The temporary wall was removed and we decided it was time for that gross vinyl flooring to come out. 

Need a quick reminder of that beautiful flooring?!

Trevor was daddy's big helper for this particular project.

The wood flooring was under the vinyl just up to where the edition was so we are hoping to be able to salvage as much as that as we possibly can. It's in pretty rough shape as you can see in this close up shot but we'll see if we can do it.

Mark worked on ripping the floor up, I brought everything to the dumpster and Trevor pulled up most of the nails with the pry bar all by himself. He is such a good helper!

 

This is how it looks now, all cleaned up!

We have a little work to do before it's ready for new flooring. I have to mention too, although I don't have any photos of them, but Mark's dad has been working very hard on getting all the electrical done in this room (and everywhere else). Including all new outlets and new can lights in the ceiling. 

It is looking great and it feels so much better in there already with that old flooring out. 

I still haven't decided what to do yet in there...not sure if we want to go with a vinyl flooring or try to find a similar hardwood to match the original hardwood as best as we can. 

What do you guys think? Is is easy to match up old wood with new wood?