Nothing Is Ever "Free"

So some of you have been wondering why I've been out of touch for so long.....it all started a couple of years ago (yes, the story goes back that far!). The top layer of the vinyl flooring in our dining room/kitchen started peeling off and we also noticed a soft spot forming by the patio doors in the dining room. At the time we were unable to do anything about it financially, but we also knew that if we waited a bit we'd be able to get free flooring to replace it (the house I grew up in is being torn down....replaced with commercial development.....and we could take the hardwood floors up from the bedrooms there and put them in our dining room here once my parents completed the deal on their old house). Well, a few deals fell through, time passed, and finally this spring a deal was completed and we were able to start our flooring project. So DH, DS and I commenced pulling up the hardwood flooring out of my old home (while DD contentedly played with her grandparents at their new home). After a few weekends of VERY hard work, we had all of the wood up and waiting at our house......and then the fun REALLY began. DH began the work of removing the the vinyl flooring (which pulled up way too easily, meaning it hadn't been put in correctly to begin with!), only to discover that the "small soft spot" by the patio door was actually a HUGE rotted, moldy area that had to be completely removed, leaving a hole about 8 feet by 2 feet in the floor!!! Yep, we could look right down into the basement......NOT ideal when you have a couple of kids in the house! And it gets worse.....

So this rotted subflooring goes out UNDER the patio doors, which means that in order to replace the plywood subfloor we have to remove the patio door. Of course, we discover this on the day before we are supposed to leave on vacation......so vacation gets delayed a day (luckily we were driving so no penalties with changing when we were to leave). DH then proceeds to pull off all of the trim work around the door, inside and outside, to get ready to remove the door......only to discover that the majority of the bottom of the wood frame around the door is also rotted beyond repair! So we head off to the hardware store to buy a new door......only to discover that the only patio doors kept in stock anywhere are 6-foot wide doors.....and ours is only 5 feet wide! Which means we have to special order a patio door and wait 2-3 weeks for it to come in. Now luckily we discovered this BEFORE we pulled the old door out of the wall. So after ordering our new door, we returned home, DH stapled a tarp over the old door and pounded the trim back up over it all to get it as waterproof as possible while I finished packing. Then we went ahead and left on vacation since there was nothing more we could do at that point with the project until the new door arrived. And that is the beginning of how our "free" floor has turned out to be not so free!