We're Not Gonna Take It!
First, my warning: there are some really disgusting pictures in this post.
Well, we knew when we bought this house that it would need a lot of TLC. The pictures make the house more impressive than it really is, and we have always planned on this place being a real labor of love. But, I can honestly say that I never thought I would spend my Friday nights like this one.
The last couple of weekends we, with the help of parents and brothers, have worked hard, painting the kitchen/dining room/living room/hallway and landscaping in the front, along with various other little projects. For the most part, we had decided to let things stay as they were for a while. It was nice to clean up and live like a normal person for a while. That lasted about four weekdays.
We start with some super-smelly carpet in the living room/dining room (it continues through the hallway and bedrooms, but is not so smelly there and thus is not involved in this story). The previous owners had four dogs, and it seems as though these little yippers were not often let out to do their business in the yard when they needed to. The smell was there when we looked at the house, when we made an offer, when Stanley Steamer cleaned the carpet, and when it got warm and humid, the carpet smelled even worse. This week has been especially bad.
Since the smell has quickly escalated, we move on to tonight, and armed with a brand-new box cutter and blade, some duct tape, bleach, and many trash bags, we begin our next project.
This action (combined with me pulling the carpet and rolling it), reveals something worse than we even imagined.
However, since this is the corner that always smelled the worst, we had some hope for the rest of the floor. Once we pulled up the pad, our hopes were... dashed.
The sub-floor is stained. The especially dark spot right by the door was actually still wet when we pulled off the carpet and pad. Disgusting. (On the plus side, you can see my stellar paint job in the corner of the picture.) So our temporary solution?!
We bleached it! The harsh scent of bleach is actually a welcome change for us. Our next step is to have my dad over to check and make sure the plywood sub-floor is in good enough shape to keep (we think it is, but want to be safe). Then we will kilz it until we are ready to put in some hardwood.
Hopefully someday we'll be able to put up pictures of the total transformation. For now, I'm spending as much of the weekend away as possible.
Well, we knew when we bought this house that it would need a lot of TLC. The pictures make the house more impressive than it really is, and we have always planned on this place being a real labor of love. But, I can honestly say that I never thought I would spend my Friday nights like this one.
The last couple of weekends we, with the help of parents and brothers, have worked hard, painting the kitchen/dining room/living room/hallway and landscaping in the front, along with various other little projects. For the most part, we had decided to let things stay as they were for a while. It was nice to clean up and live like a normal person for a while. That lasted about four weekdays.
We start with some super-smelly carpet in the living room/dining room (it continues through the hallway and bedrooms, but is not so smelly there and thus is not involved in this story). The previous owners had four dogs, and it seems as though these little yippers were not often let out to do their business in the yard when they needed to. The smell was there when we looked at the house, when we made an offer, when Stanley Steamer cleaned the carpet, and when it got warm and humid, the carpet smelled even worse. This week has been especially bad.
Since the smell has quickly escalated, we move on to tonight, and armed with a brand-new box cutter and blade, some duct tape, bleach, and many trash bags, we begin our next project.
This action (combined with me pulling the carpet and rolling it), reveals something worse than we even imagined.
However, since this is the corner that always smelled the worst, we had some hope for the rest of the floor. Once we pulled up the pad, our hopes were... dashed.
The sub-floor is stained. The especially dark spot right by the door was actually still wet when we pulled off the carpet and pad. Disgusting. (On the plus side, you can see my stellar paint job in the corner of the picture.) So our temporary solution?!
We bleached it! The harsh scent of bleach is actually a welcome change for us. Our next step is to have my dad over to check and make sure the plywood sub-floor is in good enough shape to keep (we think it is, but want to be safe). Then we will kilz it until we are ready to put in some hardwood.
Hopefully someday we'll be able to put up pictures of the total transformation. For now, I'm spending as much of the weekend away as possible.
Well Megs, that sounds about as fun as how I spent my Friday afternoon/evening, 9.5 hours at a track meet!!!!! It had to be the longest HOA League Meet in history. Because of the wonderful storms I spent hours running off high jump, also probably a record, and then the rest of the time doing other things, like making sure squirrelly high schoolers didn't get hit by lightning, not that I really cared, unlike one of the light poles. Incidentally, a very very very close lightning strike is the loudest sound I have ever heard. EVER!!!
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