Progress

Garbage from two weeks ago

Last week's garbage 

Sometimes pictures say more than words. As you can see, we threw out a lot of garbage (the "sanitation engineers" probably have horrible nicknames for me by now) the last two weeks, which means we've made lots of progress. Unfortunately my laptop broke, so I haven't been able to write about all the work we've done. There's still a lot to do before we can even move in, but the smell is going away and it feels like we've accomplished a lot. Hopefully, I'll be able to post more updates soon.

If I haven't made it clear, I have a lot of work to do on this house and I don't have a lot of time to do it in. I set out with a plan: Get rid of anything that smells bad, fix up the bedroom and bathroom, move in and do everything else later. It sounded easy, but shockingly it hasn't been quite so simple. You've already seen how fun the wallpaper removal was and that was done relatively fast. Carpet removal should've been one of the easier jobs, but as it happens, it's been the biggest hold up. The den and kitchen both had carpet padding that rotted and stuck to the floor underneath it. Attempts to scrape it with commercial floor scrapers were futile and I was forced to move on to other projects.

I did a lot of research online and none of the solutions I read about sounded like they would work for me. I contemplated a lot of solutions, ranging from the semi-rational (cutting out the sub-floor), to the ingenious (lighting the padding on fire and letting it burn off), but none sounded quite right to me. Worst of all, I even considered hiring someone to do it for me. In the meantime, I moved on to the top floor, painting the master bedroom and removing the carpet. While removing the carpet in the master bedroom, I had to remove the metal strip that covers where the carpet connects to the next room and I had an idea. What if I removed the strip between the den and the foyer, maybe there would be a way to get below the tile and scrape from there? With little hope, I removed the strip and inspected the floor beneath it. The tiles were the old kind that people used to use in their basements (probably with asbestos, but I'm pretending that's not a possibility) and didn't look like they'd come out easily. For the second time in my life, I was wrong. Using the floor scraper. I was able to remove all the tiles, along with the carpet padding, in just a few hours.

When things go right, they go right and I was able to get carpeting removed from two more bedrooms, the stairs and the dining room in just a few more hours. Unfortunately, the kitchen situation is a little worse. There's also a tile floor under the carpet padding, but unlike the tiles in the den, these won't come up so easily. I've been able to remove a few tiles, with a paint scraper and my hands, but it's time consuming and not all tiles come up. It's also very messy and difficult to breathe in there.


Update: I managed to remove all the carpeting on the lower level and I've moved onto other projects for now.

The illusion of progress

Our situation is getting desperate, my wife and I have been living in my parents house (albeit their second, empty house) since early July. It's a perfectly nice and comfortable house, we have plenty of privacy (usually) and so far it's rent free, so I'm not complaining. It's quite tempting, in fact, to simply unpack all of our boxes in this house and live here. Realistically, we don't want to take advantage of my family (any more than we already have) and it would be nice to know where all of our stuff is. It's getting tiring spending hours looking through boxes in our garage for some small thing we need that we haven't had in 4 months.

With that in mind, I decided to put all my effort into work that will let us move into our house, even if some areas of the house will still be unusable. The most important room for us, is the master bedroom, so I figured I'd start there. Originally, we planned on knocking down a wall to make the room bigger and double the size of the bathroom, while also adding a walk-in closet. In the interest of speeding things up (also to avoid collapsing the roof by removing a load-bearing wall), I decided to leave the walls where they are now and just clean the room up.

I primed and painted the ceiling and walls (finally something I have experience with), which came out looking pretty good, in my extremely humble opinion. I might add pictures later, if I can figure out how to make them look good. Then I pulled out the carpet, which was shockingly easy, for once. The wood floor underneath the carpeting looks like it's brand new, but we might have it refinished anyway because the color is a little ugly and it would be nice to plug all the holes from the staples and nails used to hold in the carpeting. All that's left to do now is clean, or refinish the floor and install new molding. Finally, I think, we're making some progress. Then I think of what's left to do and it feels like I've done nothing at all.

List of things that need to be done before we can move in:

1. Paint three more bedrooms, two bathrooms and hallway (some drywall needs to be replaced first).
2. Replace tile floor and shower in master bathroom.
3. Replace vanity, sink and toilet in master bathroom.
4. Remove carpeting in three bedrooms, hallway and stairs.
5. Clean or refinish wood floors in three bedrooms, hallway and stairs.
6. Install molding in all rooms.
7. Prime or paint ceilings and walls on the main floor of the house.
8. Remove carpeting from living room, dining room and kitchen (project currently stalled in living room and kitchen b/c the carpet padding is rotted onto the subfloor)

I think that's about it. So, I have a lot more to do and no time to do it in, but hey, I've got my master bedroom done (almost) and I'm going to enjoy that accomplishment, small as it may be!