Refresh chronicles (plus update)

In the ongoing effort to fix what is tired and broken in our home, I've been mostly happy with our new living room couches and redone kitchen, however I think I made a poor choice on the newly laid floor. Maybe I cheaped out. I definitely didn't research the vinyl plank options enough, and made a quick choice based on the look of the surface, rather than doing due diligence by learning the pros and cons of the different materials and formulations. Perhaps I should have gone with a thicker, more expensive product, and now I can see us having to replace the floors yet again in a few years. 

There was one spot where the planks were popping up a bit, three adjacent boards buckling upward at the edges right where I sit in my rolling chair to work at the dining table. The contractor brought his flooring guy to fix the section of flooring today, and the guy sort of implied that the product might be inferior, that those planks right there might have been warped out the box, and this sort of thing can happen to lesser products despite manufacturers claims. I had known I wasn't one hundred percent happy with my floor choice almost right away, when I realized I didn't want to bring it into the bedrooms, even though my plan is to eventually remove the worn carpets in there and put down hardwood or engineered wood or good quality vinyl plank floors. I was quite clear that the floor I had chosen for the living area and kitchen wasn't it, even if it did look a whole lot better than the scuffed and scratched and worn through maple veneer over which it was laid. Oh well. Today's fix is turning out to be a much bigger job than anticipated, and I suppose I will just have to see how the repaired section holds up over time. Live and learn as my husband likes to say. In the scheme of life's problems, this feels like I'm complaining about a very unimportant thing. 

You can see the new vinyl plank floor in the photo above. And here is what the kitchen floor looked like before. I'd forgotten how worn through it was, I'd convinced myself it had character, but now I very much like the airy expanse of the new floor.  I also like having a place to tuck the cutting boards and sheet pans that used to live in the corner, and having enough task lighting so as to no longer need that $10 Ikea lamp that listed to one side, and throwing out enough junk so that we can now put the Instapot and other stuff that used to live on the counter into cabinets.

Update: They finished the replacement of the wonky section of floor and it looks good! Let's hope that everything lasts just a bit better than I think it will, okay? It will help that I've now put down a low-pile rug under the dining table since I'm going to continue to work in front of the big window there, and will continue rolling my work chair over the just repaired floor. Might as well protect it. So what if the blue area rug clashes with the red curtains. I find I actually don't mind. Of course I am now exhausted. Indulging in catastrophic thinking about insignificant things takes a lot of adrenaline!