5 Things I Learned About Winter Home Renovations in Minnesota
Coming off of one of the coldest weeks in Minnesota history, my boyfriend and I started some home improvement projects with the help of our families. We got really lucky weather wise with a high in the 30's and sunshine.
Saturday we spent priming, painting, and mainly focusing on putting new flooring in our kitchen/entry way. Here are a few lessons I learned.
1. There will be snow/slush/mud/winter boogers - Rugs help, but not when you are putting in new floors where people will be walking in and out. Cleaning those at the end is the only way to go.
2. Pick a warm day - We had a lot of fumes between paint, primer, and cleaning products. We were lucky it was nice enough to crack the windows.
3. Designate a cleaner - My sister was a rock star with sweeping and vacuuming all the dust up as by brother-in-law was sawing and laying flooring. She also just really likes vacuuming so that helps.
4. Use the help when you can get it - We were really lucky to have the help of both of our families. They gave up their Saturday to help us out and there's no way we would've got everything we did done, if it wasn't for them.
5. Crock pots are a lifesaver - Like I said, we were putting new flooring in the kitchen. It's hard to cook when the floor is changing under you. I threw together a crock pot lasagna that morning and it was ready to feed the helpers later that day, without being in the way.
We had a great crew helping us, and there's still a lot of projects to be done this spring and summer! Here are the before and after pictures of the flooring.