Sore and Frustrated...
I call this a vacation??? This old body can't move very well tonight, as every bone/muscle has been contorted every which way during this process. I arose this morning to my hands frozen in an odd semi-fist state. Amazing grunts and groans escape from my mouth each time I stand up or sit down. There's a reason I educated myself and joined the business world. Manual labor is not for me, no matter how much I feel the need to prove that I don't need to just write a check for home improvements.

Disregard everything that Trading Spaces has shown us. Replacing carpet with laminate flooring is NOT as easy as they claim. It took me a full day to rip up the previous flooring/trim and neutralize the cat pee. Sure, snapping together a few boards is easy enough, but keeping those together as you attempt to lock in more rows is like a bad Vaudeville skit....pop one end together and the strips on the other end pop out. I marched myself up to Lowe's this evening to complain and request a reduced fee on their professional installation ($800). The Lowe's-worker-bee this evening just happened to be the one who teaches the "how-to" class on laminate floors. He has the day off tomorrow, so we've worked out a reduced fee for me to pay him cash to complete the job. I'm sure this means that he's breaking every Lowe's rule...but I'm all over paying him $200 to take it from here. I wonder if he throw in the installation of new trim as well....hmmmm.