If our new place has "good bones", as they say, it's also got the old, wrinkly skin (and smell) of an octogenarian chain-smoker.An exaggeration? Sure. Unlike many of the houses we encountered during our lengthy house-hunt, most notably bank-owned foreclosure properties, the house isn't trashed. And, unlike the first of two properties we bid on that fell through prior to closing on our current house, there aren't any shoddy quick-fixes below the surface, either.
Side-note: the first property, fittingly situated on a street called First Place, failed inspection, among many other structural travesties, because roof-rot was patched by a painted over cardboard pizza box.
Our house was actually a rental property for at least the last ten years, so it's in relatively good shape. When the owner passed away, his son sold the house and, as was explained to us, directed the funds to his mother, the owner's widow. That we didn't price-gouge an honest home-owner or vulture a down-on-their-luck family on a short-sale or foreclosure definitely sits nicely on our shared conscience.
Still, the place is in need of a complete style overhaul. Dingy brown carpeting, linoleum flooring, popcorn ceilings, stark white walls, well-worn cabinets and avocado countertops don't exactly jive with our preferred aesthetic.
If you're keeping track, we're tackling the floors, walls, ceiling and pretty much everything between. Ambitious? You betcha.
For practical purposes, we started day one at ground level. We started by peeling back carpeting, which ran through the living room, hallway and all three bedrooms. I myself had never removed carpet, so it was surprising to see what waited for us underneath.
There was a bright blue carpet pad and a few strips of tape holding the large pieces of padding together. All along each edge of every room were two extended strips of wood nailed into the floor and lined with small, sharp, upward-facing nails to grab a hold of and hold down the carpet. Below the carpet padding, though, was the biggest surprise, and easily the most disturbing:
Dirt.
Lots and lots and lots of dirt. Sand, really: enough to build a respectable sand castle, enough to make us never want to live in a house with carpet again and certainly enough to re-enforce our decision to acid stain the concrete throughout the entire house.
In the kitchen/dining room - one big room, really - we had linoleum to deal with, a task I feared could pose a problem during removal. Linda and I got to work, and much to our surprise and joy, the sheets of flexible linoleum peeled right up with relatively little effort on our part. In little more than 30 minutes, we had peeled all of it up.
.....or so we thought. In fact, if the floor were a hockey game, we were barely into the first intermission.
It turns out that there were three layers of linoleum laid on top of one another, and we had only removed the newest and least troublesome one. The bottom two proved to be much stiffer and more stubbornly attached to the floor, of course, but another hour of hard labor with a scraper proved we were up to the task.
As our shadows grew longer and our energy waned, we began the unenviable task of removing the wooden tack-strips from each floor's perimeter. It's simple enough - using a pry-bar, we simply pried up the wooden strips, leaving a line of nails embedded in the cement - but it's slow, splintery work. After a bit of that and some serious cleaning (or not so serious; I wasn't there to supervise the entire time), we called it a day.
In just one day, our bland rental property transformed into a real project, and the houses bones, picked clean, show just how far we have to go.
View photos of our progress on Facebook.
