You might recall that I was gabbing about our living room remodel on Thursday. I am happy to say that it is mostly complete (aside from hooking up a few things like our media PC and Wii, and putting a few more things away) and it is fabulous! Now we just need a whole bunch of new frames and prints of photos we’ve taken to put in them!

Before we started moving everything around, I asked Stefan’s parents to put a funky little product called GapSeal down between our floorboards because there is up to 8mm of space between some of the boards. What I didn’t realize is that the old blood-red color that used to be on the floor was also in a lot of the cracks…along with a ton of the sand and tiny pebbles from the insulation under our flooring. Yes, I’ve mentioned it before, but the house is ancient and they used to put sand under the floors to keep them warmer. A total pain when you’re vacuuming!

So what I envisioned as a fairly quick 4 hour project suddenly became more like 12 hours of backbreaking scraping and shuffling along on the floor. Why his parents still want to talk to me at all, I don’t know. I must have apologized 4 times in the span of just as few hours once I’d realized how bad this project really was. But they totally powered through and it is SO absolutely worth it.

Gapseal is a thin paper or plastic tape (we had rolls of each so I’m not sure what the current form might be) that you fold in the middle and then stick into the grooves between the floorboards.

It forms a little “V” once it’s nestled in the floor, and the roughness of the sides of the wood keep the product from pulling out of the floor when you vacuum. What is really great is that this is actually an insulating product because it stops drafts that come from under your floor. And in our case, we’re thinking it will also cut back on the amount of dust and dirt that we end up with in the room…because even with our big dirty Newfie at home, needing to dust every 3 days just doesn’t seem normal. And no, I don’t do it that often so by the time I do get it done, stuff is just black.

So here’s what our Gapseal looks like in the floor. In most places, you don’t notice it at all (which is the whole point). I purposely picked one that was a little more apparently just so you can see what it looks like…but I was down on the ground trying to make this shot work.

In case you’d like to learn more about Gapseal, you might be out of luck. The company has since discontinued this product and brought out the new and improved DraughtEx. It’s a tubular sealant that works more or less the same way…but would probably prevent larger cracks from catching dirt.

The room feels absolutely enormous now. And the new flat screen is oh so lovely. We definitely have plenty of room now to play Wii, exercise, let Mack have her own space and so on. Since one extra seating spot would be nice, we are talking about bringing down one of the old chaise-lounge sofas that we inherited with the house…but it will need to be cleaned up and reupholstered. Thankfully there is someone in town who does that — we just need to explore how much that might cost. And then comes the hard part of selecting fabric. 🙂

We’ll also probably be making another trip to IKEA at some point…which I’m sure will not end cheaply. But it would be practical to have a shelf beside the TV stand to put the new DVD folders. Plus it would be nice to have some baskets in there to put all of Mack’s toys when they’re not in use. The plain brown box I’ve got now is ok…but I’m sure there are better options out there. Maybe even some sort of trunk that we can close it all away in.

Anyway, now I’m off to finish washing all the covers on the sofa and its pillows…and if I get really crazy, I’ll even wash the drapes again. Then everything in the room will be fresh and almost like new again. A word of advice: If you have dogs, kids or are clumsy, always get sofas with removable covers or leather. All our sofa covers and the drapes are washable…which makes for very easy cleaning when they start to get grungy. And with mostly off-white furniture, things definitely get grungy around here!