Today Our New Old House smells like the following:

CitriStrip
Mineral Spirits
Fabric Softener
Laundry Detergent
Bleach
Rustoleum spray paint
Tea tree oil & lavender
Nachos

It’s been a busy weekend in Our New Old House. We set ourselves a deadline of Dec. 19 to have the living room and dining room done - or at least done enough to host a big holiday […]

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I ripped out the carpet in the bathroom this week. It smelled like pee. Here’s Zoot sitting on the carpet one last time:

Under the carpet was some nasty padding:

And under that was some wierd old flooring that looks like those marble colored rubber balls that come with a jacks set.

Anyway, that smelled like mildew. I […]

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I’ve been making steady progress scraping up the solidified carpet padding from days of yore. Here are some pictures of the past two weeks’ progress:

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I believe I have perfected my technique for removing the hard-as-a-rock cemented down carpet padding that was left behind from the late 60s/early 70s.
The good thing here is that the padding has hopefully protected the wood for all these years. The bad thing is that if I want to keep the original finish of […]

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Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how to deal with the crazy petrified carpet pad that fused itself to the hardwood floors in the living room, dining room, and hallway. It is some sort of diabolical material that is impervious to water, laughs at me when I use a sander, and outlasts […]

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