More House Work

You may recall one of my recent blogs about Fixing the House. The epic continued as we stripped off the trim and molding—and I found out we would definitely have to repaint it. Again.—We must have vacuumed about five times to make sure there weren’t a ton of loose bits on the floor. Then we starting unrolling, sticking down and cutting tthe foam underlayment.
I said, “HT, hold the roll up so I can cut along the wall.” And the above picture was her response. I made her hold the pose as I ran for my phone and the hilarious picture of her above.

After much grumbling, measuring and consultation of the instructions, the first row of boards were laid down. I have to give a shout out to Kit on this one. He read the crummy instructions, got all the tools, measured, cut, hammered and more to get that floor in. He is great!

Don’t let the pictures fool you, after the first few boards were put in HT and I went to fix a massive pot of spaghetti, breaded and baked mushrooms (very loosely based on this recipe) and a green salad. Another friend came over because he wanted to learn how to install this type of flooring. Kit and I got tons of work done with such willing helpers!

Kit worked quickly and well. We finally took a break for supper and decided to pick it up the next day. That’s when I helped the most, because everyone was at work on in school.

The flooring was tedious, there was a lot of fudging and techniques you had to learn along the way to make it work. The last piece wanted to be a monster, but Kit finally make it happen.
Thankfully, after all the cursing, we finally have a completed laminate floor!!
Supper was slamming too, by the way.

Until next time,
Kat

Fixing the House: Our Progress

Recently, Kit and I have been working on fixing up the spare bedroom. A friend that will be living with us through the winter semester and I can’t wait!
Some of my friends from work came over to help on several occasions and they were so efficient I didn’t have time for pictures.
As my professor would say, if you have time to take photosof people working then you’re not working with everyone else.

We started out by fixing some nails holes and one random huge hole in the wall. We put on one coat of killz, to keep any evils from seeping through. And put two coats of midnight purple on the walls.

I’ll go ahead and tell ya, it is a lot of purple. The room looks gorgeous though. If I ever get to decorating it properly, I want to add accents of silver and light gray.

After the paints were laid, HT and I pulled the carpet and foam underlayment. We removed the carpet tack strips and out to the trash they went. We only found out that kicking the pry bar underneath the strips was crazy. Yes, we had a hammer, but you see, we also had wine-given strength.

The other day, I reorganized, read: pulled everything out of the closet. Once I had some room, I pulled the carpet in the closet. Tell me, who chooses to put down carpet in a closet so darn awkward!?

I made the decision not to pull the strips in the closet because I do not plan on putting flooring in there. I will likely change my mind later, but I will wait for the inspiration of a drunken evening to pull up the rest of it.

Please note the cat taking advantage of the free bed.
My next steps are to paint a second coat of ultra white paint on the brown trim and coat the floor with killz before we put down the laminate.

We are also replacing some of the particleboard near the doorway, but we haven’t gotten that finished yet. I will be painting around it until we get it all the way pulled up and replaced.

I am so pleased that this 1970s room is getting a face lift. I hope that we can continue reorganizing and replacing bits of our house as we go. It is exciting to find that fixing one’s house is possible.
We are certainly not Weekend Warriors. Perhaps Weeklong Warriors would be more appropriate.