A little back story: When my husband and I bought our house in 2011, we knew we would want to replace the carpet on the first floor with wood laminate ASAP. Upon moving in, other projects took priority. Then, in the summer of 2012 our dog was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. His symptoms did serious damage to carpet we already hated, so the floors moved back to the top of the list after he passed away. We knew we'd need some time off of work to get it done, so I suggested Thanksgiving (a holiday I do not particularly care for). Thanksgiving is my husband's favorite holiday, but he graciously agreed to give it up in order for us to have five days to install new floors. We figured it might take three days, and then we could relax and have a nice big meal on Sunday.
Yeah, that didn't happen. In short, nothing went as planned. Some parts were much easier than anticipated (tearing out the carpet), but most parts were much more difficult (EVERYTHING ELSE). We took the full five days and still had to install the molding the following weekend. It was the greatest test of our relationship to date, and we've been together since 2000. The good news is the floor looked amazing! They made our house look so much fancier. There was, however, one small problem: The new floors were the exact same color of wood as our wall of BILLY bookcases from IKEA. Ugh.
[Aside: When we got married, we used some of our wedding money to purchase a wall of BILLY bookcases for our rental house. I narrowed it down to either the dark wood or white finish and settled on the dark wood because we had light wood floors at the time and I figured if I decided I would prefer white later, I could always paint them. The nearest IKEA was in Charlotte and conveniently, I had plans to fly out of Charlotte to the Thousand Islands with my friend Amy, so I talked her into going to IKEA with me before our flight. It was an adventure that ended in us discovering that the shelves wouldn't fit in my car. We split the load between our two cars and left them in Charlotte during our vacation. When we got back, Amy said she would be in my area the following week and could meet me to deliver the rest of the shelves then. (Did I mention what a good friend she is?) The best part? In the week between my return from Charlotte and Amy's delivery of the bookcases, I bought a station wagon. No joke. End of aside.]
So back to Thanksgiving, now I was stuck with shelves and floors that were the same color. The obvious solution was to paint the shelves, which is exactly what I did. I used a laminate primer (2 coats) and then painted them the same color as our walls. I couldn't believe how well the primer worked! I had done a little research online about painting laminate, and everyone said the key was priming and I can testify to that. My husband helped me attach white molding on the top and bottom of the shelves that matched the pre-existing molding in our house. I used white lattice to trim out the fronts of the shelves and we added boards between the shelves to frame out the wall-mounted TV. Finally, we added rope lighting across the tops of the shelves. We didn't finish until the last few days of December. It was a very BILLY holiday...
