The plaster/drywall repairs and texturing is 50% complete. It looks great.
Now it's time to address the floors.
The floors, however, are the exciting part. A big reason I bought this home was knowing the entire first floor had hardwood flooring. You could tell by a hint of what lie below the cheap 1970s-style wood laminate in the hallway closet. Whoever covered the first floor did not cover all the way to the wall, revealing the jewel below. Fortunately, other potential buyers may not have noticed this before running for the hills. ;)
The living/dining rooms were already bare (except for the entryway between the front door and that "wall" previously removed). The two bedrooms and hallway were covered with the laminate, see below. There are no words.
The kitchen and upstairs bedrooms are covered with pergo, but I am leaving the kitchen for a much-needed remodel down the road and the master will be carpeted. Thus, my focus this weekend was on the downstairs bedrooms/hallway.
I thought removing wallpaper was bad. Oh no, that was the easy stuff. Now we can talk about "back breaking work"...rather back/wrist/leg/neck breaking work! Everything about this was painful (and as I am writing this post the morning after, I can attest to the bodily damage because I CANNOT MOVE). I could not work on my knees because of the whole bee/sidewalk incident two weeks ago and the resultant scabs, so I ended up just bending over and hammering a crowbar under the tiles, then using my weight as leverage to life up each tile. And if I was lucky, an entire tile would come up, but more often than not a third of a tile (and another F-bomb) came up. Later, I ended up sitting on a stool. Then I moved to sitting on my butt. The entire process became an exercise in changing positions to minimize pain. Ultimately, efforts were fruitless and I got to the point where I left merely a few tiles in the hallway. That is very uncharacteristic of me, but then this house is pushing my limits big time. I am having to learn to say "enough is enough".
And then there is the result. So worth it, eh? And by the way, I checked with the restoration dude. He said not to worry about removing the glue since it would go away with the sanding. THANK GOD! I caught a break.
Fortunately, my mom and Stew came over to help. To date, I have not shed a tear BECAUSE OF THEM. I have wanted to, but they continue to help and keep my spirits lifted. For instance, Stew showed me how to remove the tile yesterday.Then he and my mom went into the yard and removed the wisteria from the porch. I totally forgot to take an "after" picture, but here is a "before".
Yep, that mess is gone! You may be saying, oh no, boo hoo, it's beautiful! Why would you do such a thing! Well for starters, it is a rat's nest, meaning it's easy entry for all rodents into my attic. It's also a major fire hazard (Pemco told me so). It's also chewing up the roof tiles, and some of the fascia wood has to be replaced because of it. That wisteria has been allowed to grow uncontrolled for a long time, and leave it to my mom to say, that's enough! This shit is being tamed! Now before you get all bent out of shape, it's still there. My mom and Stew simply chopped it to a couple feet high so this thing can continue to grow in a controlled manner moving forward. It will be back! Only in a much less offensive manner.
And a special shout out to my mom and Stew because they spent yesterday working in MY yard, cleaning it up, pruning it, removing limbs that were touching the house, cleaning gutters and moss...it was an incredibly productive day. I cannot thank them enough. Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!
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