Off To Work We Go

Harper doesn't watch television or movies yet, but I've been singing that song from Snow White to her for the past few days. We've been knee deep in projects over at the house. Trying to get everything some things ready before we move in. We've already found a handyman who is going to be moving into the spare (moldy) bedroom in the basement. Not really, but seriously he is going to be helping us out with a ton of projects/repairs that we have planned. I think Nick feels a lot more comfortable having a professional take a look at things and give us the thumbs up before we start doing things like chipping off paint and ripping down ceilings. While I have more of a "dive in head first" approach, but I'll get to that in a minute.

So, yesterday Nick took Harper and dropped me off around 8:30 am, and didn't come back until after 3 pm. Oh boy did I get some cleaning done. At least the kitchen is livable now! We also got a little excited and tore up the carpet in the living room. We just could not wait to see what was under there. Drum roll, please.

Hooray! Nick and I both gave a sigh of relief when we lifted up the corner and saw wood beams staring back at us! I think we were both waiting for there to be something wrong with them (think giant burn mark, stain, or gaping hole) but they have been protected by the gross carpet and are in great shape! The tearing up was the easy part. It took us no time at all to roll up the carpet and then the crumbling padding underneath which is stapled into the wood floor. After reading some not-so-great things about tearing up the stables, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there really weren’t that many! I was able to tear up most of them with needle-nose pliers and Nick got the remainder with a mini crow bar.

Then came the less easy and exciting part, tearing up those tack strips. The carpet is held in place with these strips that have nails (or tacks, eh?) sticking up. They are then nailed down every 6 inches or so. The two longest walls in the room had two tack strips, one that was thin and new, and the other a little thicker and obviously much older. The thinner one was nailed down ever 4 inches. Every time I could get my crow bar under it, the thing would splinter and crack everywhere. It came up in a million little pieces, and I found it was fastest/easiest to leave the nails in the floor and then go back and rip them all out after I’d cleared a section of splintered wood. 

As you can see in the picture below, the older tack strips came up in big long pieces. Super easy, and 100x faster than the new ones. Things just aren’t what they used to be, I guess.

I only let myself work on that room for about an hour, because my mission of the day was to get that kitchen clean! So after I snapped these quick pictures on my cell, I moved in there to start scrubbing. I didn’t bother to get any pictures of that, I’m sure you don’t want to see the dirty fridge anyways. 

I got a tiny bit distracted in there though and may or may not have torn down the hideous drop ceiling and started attacking the wallpaper. (Hint: I totally did both of those things! Sorry Nick!)

Things are starting to look up and we’re feeling a lot better about where we stand in this house. We’re really excited to turn it into our home. Can’t wait for this clean slate (in the form of a really, really dirty house) and all the exciting things that 2014 is going to bring!

XOXO

Sam