Remodeling Phase 1: The Living Room Floor

Today was a stormy, muggy day not very good for garden work, so according to the plans we made earlier in the week we decided to take the next step:

The House Remodeling Has Begun. 

 (Ok, after I typed the above I swear I heard the ominous Screech, Screech, Screech!!! of violin strings right out of the Alfred Hitchcock movie 'Psycho' and the shower/murder scene, come on, you know the tune, right?)  Gives me chills.

It's pretty late right now, approaching 2:30 AM, but I'm too wound up to sleep, so I thought I'd write about the experience thus far.  Ok, 'thus far' I know I would much rather saw down ten trees, place another couple hundred tons of rock and rip up the rest of the lawn than remodel the house.  Oh, I'm sure it will be much nicer when we're done, but it's the getting to the done part I'm yearning for (and this is only 12 hours later, but SHHHH....don't tell Carl I said that, OK?)

Joel & Carl work on tearing up the carpeting.

I had to talk long and hard to convince Carl that the 32 yr. old carpet installed in 1978 had outlived its natural life at least two decades before, ha.  Carl is very frugal and so am I, but sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and out with the old and in with the new.  This is a big change for us, going from carpeting to hardwood floors.   I think Carl's trepidation is based more on the 'what if we made a bad decision and hate hardwood floors after they are installed?' than any actual worry over the financial end of it as the room isn't very big and the cost wasn't exorbitant.  We have our wonderful nephew coming tomorrow morning (Saturday) to install the floor and there are certainly no worries over his workmanship.  Carl's just very conservative and hates to see waste.  

Carl had to work today, but was home by noon and Joel was home by 2:30PM, so with Joel's help, we hauled all of the living room furniture into the dining room, which makes the dining room and the back door nearly impassable.  Below, Carl and Joel are cutting the carpeting.   Teddy Dog was fascinated by this turn of events and was willing to help in any way he could.

So this is what the living room would look like with yellow carpeting; uh, I think I'll pass.

A

Advancing farther into the room

Carpeting completely out

Pudding Dog 'helping'  by rolling the carpet pad up:

Teddy brought a toy to the party, too.

While we were working, the rain came and went, however we were very lucky and had no severe weather, just warm, muggy conditions.  I think the warm rain will be good for the plants. I checked at midnight and see we only got 1/2 inch, but we'll take it!

After the yellow carpet pad was ripped up, I vacuumed the dirt and then we had to tear up the particle board sub-flooring too and haul it out of the house.  Now we're down to the plywood floor. 

Joel's friends, Cody and Briana stopped in to go out with Joel for supper.  Carl and I knocked off around 8 PM and ate a light supper and then got back to work around 9PM.  Joel came back here with his friends and they worked very hard tonight,  which was SO nice of them!   Cody brought along some of his tools to help with the demolition.  Ann also stopped in after work tonight and helped immensely.  What would we do without our friends?

We have many annoying squeaks in the floor, so Joel is fastening the plywood down with 2' screws.  

We don't know what we're going to do with the steps yet, we're taking a wait and see approach.

That's it for the first full day of remodeling This Old Wreck.

I guess I'd better get to bed, our nephew will be here tomorrow morning at 8AM...gee, that's not too long from now!

Karen