Our Faux Wood Floor

Over labor day weekend my hubby and I decided it was finally time to replace this gross pink carpet in his man cave.



The large wooden piece just inside the door is his desk, (aka the world of warcraft lair) and since the room occasionally doubles as a guestroom when his parents come to visit there is a daybed with a pop-up trundle against the far wall. Can you believe that when we moved in this room also included coral walls and a wall of mirror? Ugh. Trust me, as humble as it looks now, it was much worse before.

The other door on the right opens to our storage room.



Aside from the fact that the pink color wasn't exactly working in the man cave, our former pet cat decided to favor a spot behind the door in this room when she decided to refuse her litter box. Disgusting. Yeah, I'm not real choked up about the loss of this particular pet!

If any of you have ever dealt with this lovely problem before, you know that the smell of cat pee permeates everything and is impossible to wash out of carpet, especially once it gets into the padding and the sub floor like it did here. Can you tell I'm in no hurry to get another pet?! Maybe it's my super sensitive prego sniffer, but to me there's no worse smell in the universe. Cat pee is my kryptonite!

Since there is pergo flooring throughout the rest of the basement, we decided to do a faux wood peel and stick plank floor (Thanks to Pink and Polka Dot for giving me this idea- make sure and check out her faux wood floor!), and I have to say the whole process was pretty easy (no saws required since you can cut it with a pair of scissors!) and very inexpensive- just 98 cents/square foot!

First we cleared the room...


Then we ripped up the carpet (which was actually really easy).

Then came the hardest part of the job, pulling up the tacking strips around the perimeter of the room (sorry- no photo of this step!) My hubby popped them off with the back side of a hammer.

Next we cleaned the floor to get rid of all the dust and debris.

Then, to really get rid of the smell we painted the cement floor beneath with Kilz. This also gave a good surface for the flooring to adhere to.

The next day we got started laying the new floor. We started in the center of the room so that if the room is not exactly plumb, the floor wouldn't be obviously slanted on one end- make sense? Once we made sure we had a straight line marked across the center of the room, we started peeling and sticking!



It took about 3-4 hours to do the whole room, but it was really easy. I loved that it was so easy to cut the "planks" with a scissor to get a good fit around corners. Before we knew it the room looked like this!

The last step was to use either a 100 lb. roller (which I think you can rent from your local home improvement store) or a strong hubby and a rolling pin (we went with option B!) and roll the whole floor to make sure the adhesive makes good contact with the floor beneath.


I couldn't be happier with it the results!




A big thank you to Pink and Polka Dot for giving me this idea!

Now if only I can get my hubby to let me decorate in here...


Love,