Flooring

ABL's brother James and his GF Miss Patty came over to help us apply color to the walls. After they left, ABL and I did a bit more painting by ourselves. Then my parents and my Aunt and Uncle showed up to knock out the rest of the painting.
Here's RJ painting.

My dad and I started laying down a Pergo Laminate floor (Summerview Oak from the Casual Living collection). The Pergo comes with an underlayment already glued to the bottom and snaps in to place without glue. The floor is floating, meaning it isn't attached to the walls or the subfloor. It just lays there like a wooden rug. The Pergo was $52.24 a box, each box covers 17.6 square feet. My initial purchase was 24 boxes and represented everything Lowes had on the shelf (I was able to fit 24 boxes in my Cav, but it wasn't pretty). I went back a second time and picked up another 10 boxes, and I put 24 boxes on order (ABL wants a lot of the downstairs covered in wood).

Here you can see my dad, holding TG, and RJ has his back turned to the camera. The room is about half (or a third) covered by the laminate and this represents about a half days work by the two of us. I was able to finish the rest of the room by myself on Sunday. The transitions at the doors can be very frustrating.

My father-in-law came down on Monday and Tuesday to help me out. He and I were able to put down laminate in the hallway and the spare bedroom. It looks amazing. He's coming over today to help with the baseboard molding. Charlie's crew cut all the molding. In some cases it was nailed up already and I had to pull it off to put down the floor; in other cases, I had asked them to just cut it to length and I'd nail it up later. Once the molding is up, we can start moving furniture this weekend.