Saturday, May 6, 2017

house projects, revisited

Last year at this time, I was elbow-deep in home repairs & renovations as I simultaneously tried to make my house livable AND get it ready to sell (all while holding down a job, single-parenting 3 teen- and tween-aged boys, and packing up to move across the country)

Honestly? I miss house projects so much! When we were shopping for a house in Louisiana, I was pretty burned out from the remodeling scene. My purchasing criteria revolved largely around the move-in readiness of the house, and we settled on a house that was built in 2006, which is 3 decades newer than any house we'd ever owned before! The paint colors were great, the flooring was acceptable, and in we moved.

Carpet ran through the living room, down the hall into the den, and into all bedrooms. It was 10 years old and cheap, but neutral. The large kitchen/dining area was demarcated by vinyl tile which was in good enough shape and looked nice, but the division line between the carpet and title was too glaring for me. I've also surmised that Louisianians are not huge fans of carpet in the main areas of the house, as evidenced by the many, many tiled and wood/laminate floored living rooms I visited while house hunting.

A few months ago we committed to a unified floor for the living room, kitchen, and hallway, and purchased a dark hickory laminate from Home Depot. Because the area being covered was so large (and mostly because there are a million angles and things to cut around). we splurged on professional installation. The company came out and measured, we placed the order and Matt picked up all the materials to save on delivery costs.

2 months and a few subfloor issues later, we're ready for installation later this week. The carpet was ripped out over a month and a half ago (we've been living with plywood floors and relocated furniture... but that's another story), and the final step was removing the vinyl tiles from the kitchen. They're 12" x 24" and STICKY... and it's a big room. We can't take it all out right now because STICKY, but we can't leave it all for the night before because this stuff it a major pain to remove. I pulled about 10 tiles last night and had to stop. My hands hurt so much! The effort requires a combination of crowbar (which gets STICKY) and peeling tiles back by hand (hands also get STICKY) and lots of bending over and kneeling on the floor.

vinyl sticky tiles over sheet vinyl. classy.

Today I paid a kid $10 to pull up 30 tiles and it was the best money I've spent in a long time. He's on to how much work it is and I'm not sure he's desperate enough for money to do 30 more... and there's about 200 more that have to come up before Wednesday morning.

Side note- the dog doesn't understand sticky floor residue and seeing him get stuck when he walks across the area where we've removed the tile is hilarious. It doesn't seem to hurt or bother him, but the sound his paws make when he tries to walk is awesome.

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