• 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 party. That meant we have to get the following list of things done:

• Strip paint off woodwork
• Finish scraping up crustified carpet padding
• Paint the walls
• Rearrange the cables and electronics in the bookcase
• Paint the cold air return grate
• Make everything tidy and pretty

I think we’re on track to make all of those things happen. Dining room is painted. Today Brandon primed the last bit of the living room that needed it. I spray painted the grate. Woodwork is done except for a couple of troublesome spots with stubborn paint. Sections of carpet padding in the dining room are soaking, to be scraped tomorrow after work.  I bought the supplies I’ll need to stain parts of the woodwork and polyurethane it, but I think those final steps will have to wait until after the party. For now, the woodwork looks lovely just stripped of paint. It’s got a nice rich color and a smooth finish so that’s good enough for now.

It’s time for me to take a shower and get to bed. I’m exhausted, but I can’t wait to show off our progress. I’ll have some pictures soon of our living room and dining room, as well as a little treasure Brandon found behind one of the built-in bookcases.

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 put down some baking soda and left it there overnight. That got rid of the smell. Now it’s just ugly. But it’s better than pee-smelling carpet.

[tags]bathroom, cats, photos, flooring, carpet[/tags]

A very nice man named Lee Bleeker was among the attendees at our Des Moines Rehabbers Club meeting on Saturday and he stuck around afterwards to give me some advice about my problem. Lee is an old-school carpeting expert, certified as a Master in his trade by an association of his peers. He was able to expand on what I’d already learned in my research. He told me that this padding was not stuck down with adhesive (thank God!) It’s made of rubber and clay and over the years it dried out and got tamped down by foot traffic and as it dried, the clay hardened and the rubber lost its flexibility and there you have it: about a half acre of crusty, crappy carpet padding gumming up my beautiful hardwood floors.

He said I was on the right track with using a razor and wetting the material to loosen it. But he also explained that the dryness was the real reason why the padding was so hard. If I could force moisture back into the padding without harming the wood surface underneath, I’d have an easier time removing it and less chance of harming the finish.

So here’s how I put his advice into practice:

First I sprayed my mixture of fabric softener and water onto the padding, enough to really soak it.

Then I put plastic grocery bags down on top of the area I sprayed and tamped them down with my feet.

I did an area the size of two grocery sacks.

I laid down a section of old carpet I’d been using as a knee pad on top of the grocery sacks.

I left the rug there overnight.

In the morning it almost nearly all came off!

Here’s a section of the hallway I did using the same technique:

With just a few little touch up spots left behind, this is by far the best technique I’ve found so far for removing this horrible stuff. Many thanks to Lee for his generosity in sharing his wisdom with this newbie.

Here are some pictures:

Some of the crap I scraped off the floor after applying Downy and water:

The fabric pulled up pretty easily with Downy:

A glowing example of why I am working so hard to remove this stuff right, and not do a half-assed job of it. Look how beautiful that wood is underneath!

The sander was having to take off too much of the finish to continue using it. It’s not any faster than scraping carefully with a razor anyway and the razor does a better job of keeping the finish intact.

I’ll just have to keep picking away at it whenever I get a chance. We’re not in a huge rush, so if I can get a couple square feet done each week, I should be totally done in, well, I’m not going to do the math, a few months. Or something. But looking at that floor, it will all be worth it.

[tags]carpet, photos[/tags]

I started my day at 7:30, which was admittedly difficult after being at the house until just after midnight the night before. I got to the house at 8:15 and had a few moments to just stand in the middle of everything in the daylight and accept the challenge. I got to walk through the rooms and touch the walls that are now MY walls, and scuff the carpet padding on the floors that are now MY floors. I appreciated how the sunlight comes through the windows in the front bedroom, and further confirmed that that will be OUR bedroom.

I decided to go get some coffee to get me fueled for the work ahead of me, so I walked the three blocks to the little coffeeshop in the neighborhood. And guess who I met there! Mom and Craig were just finishing up their breakfast of waffles and eggs. Maybe that was Craig’s secret to his unstoppable energy! Gotta buy me some waffles!

They paid their check while my order was in for a couple of breakfast sandwiches for me and Brandon to eat at the house so they headed back to the house.

When I got back, Craig was already setting up the saw horses we borrowed from Mom’s house. He put me to work (Yes, HE put ME to work.) pulling nails from the paneling Brandon and I had finished taking off the night before. Between the two of us we pulled all the nails and stacked the paneling in two piles, one that was small enough to fit in his burning bin on his rural property, and one that would need to be cut.

Brandon was still in bed back at Mom’s house and I found out later when he did arrive that the tetanus shot he’d gotten the day before made him kind of sick overnight. He was feverish and needed a little more rest, but he felt fine when he arrived around noon.

By the time Brandon arrived, Craig and I had all the paneling cut and stacked in Craig’s truck. I couldn’t believe it!

Here’s our pile of garbage before cutting down the paneling:

Here’s all the paneling in the back of Craig’s truck:

Here’s a photo that illustrates exactly how I feel about paneling:

When we were done with that, Brandon arrived, very well rested, just in time for lunch! Grandma had set up food for us down the street. We visited with Grandpa and ate yummy tostadas, fideo, and Mexican rice. It was tempting to stay there in the air conditioning, but Craig was getting restless to get back to work (I know! Right?) so we trooped back down the street.

When we arrived back, Craig gathered an armful of brooms, shovels, and buckets, and burrowed down into the basement. We wouldn’t see him emerge until nearly 5:00 later that evening.

Meanwhile, Brandon and I made a long overdue trip to the hardware store. We placed an order for a fridge and a dishwasher. They’ll be delivered on Monday afternoon. Here’s a list of what else we bought:

• new latch for the front storm door
• screen guard for front storm door
• floor lamp for the living room
• 5″ random orbital sander
• razor blade utility scrapers
• scouring pads
• rubber gloves
• compact flourescent lightbulbs
• portable radio

When we got back, Craig was away hauling buckets of dirt and debris that he scooped out of our basement. Mom has a decorative pond in her back yard that she’s been wanting to fill in, so that’s where the dirt went.

While Brandon figured out how to get the last two stubborn pieces of paneling out from over the bookshelves…

I started tackling the weird carpet padding that was left behind in the living room, dining room, and hallway. The carpeting had been laid in the late sixties or early seventies. It was a professional job, but the padding underneath has the inconvenient quality of becoming some kind of rock hard material that has adhered to the hardwood. Craig has a lifesaving tool that pulls staples, so I started pulling staples so I could start figuring out the safest way to remove this crumbly, chalky stuff without damaging the hardwood underneath.
Here’s the padding after I pulled off the cloth-like fiber layer:

There’s a crud-covered staple on the end of that tool that I’m about to pull out (gently!).

This stuff is NOT going to go quietly.

But the sander seems to be taking care of it. I’m going to put a coarser pad on next time, but this will be a good way to get rid of this crazy stuff.

I know, the mask and goggles work better when they’re on my FACE, but I was just demonstrating for this photo. I was fully protected for the actual work. I promise.

We have a plan for this afternoon to just keep plugging away at it to try to make it mostly livable. I took a little break to dream about how warm and comfortable our living room will be when it’s done.

See you next time with even more updates!

[tags]carpet, future plans, paneling, photos, power tools[/tags]

Left work at 3:00. Brandon got a tetanus shot at 3:45. We met up with our realtor at the mortgage office at 4:30 to do the closing. Our mortgage person said closings usually take 20 minutes to half an hour, but the four of us are chatty people and we were actually there till 6:00!!! It was really fun, we got good information, and ended up with a house!

My mom called while we were there wanting to know when we were going to be at the house and what we wanted for supper. While I drove us back to the east side, Brandon ordered a pizza to be delivered to the new house. We picked up a few things at mom’s and then went over to our new old house. Before long, we received our very first pizza delivery at our new house!

Mom and her boyfriend, Craig, showed up with a pickup truck full of tools.

They took some pictures of us with our new house.

Craig helped Brandon fix the front storm door.

We set up a table in the house and sat down to eat supper.

Then we got to work!

First we pulled up the carpet. The padding underneath the living room/dining room carpet has crystallized under its fabric topside and has adhered lightly (more like crusted itself) to the wood floor underneath. Rather than spend the time to start scraping that mess up today we decided to leave the padding on the floors until the heavy work is done. Free drop cloths! The padding is actually really well intact and doesn’t pose a hazard for tripping over or anything, so it’s kind of a blessing in disguise. The padding in the back bedroom is another story. That carpet had its own padding attached to the back of the carpet. It was foam padding once. Now it is crunchy and brittle and pulverizes into fine yellow dust under our feet. The good news is that it was never tacked or glued down. We just lifted the corners it and folded right over. The bad news is that we were left with a very messy bedroom floor. You can see the back side of that carpet in the third photo here (the one with Brandon standing over the flipped over carpet looking somewhat incredulous.) The last picture in this group is a shot of some of the tack strips my mom tenaciously removed after we got the carpet pulled up.

Then we started pulling down paneling. Whoever installed it had added additional wood trim at the bottom that I had to remove from every wall before we could take down that section of paneling. Brandon said, “I can’t fault them for shoddy work. It was well constructed paneling at least.” I nodded and said, “Uh huh,” as I stuck a wonder bar under the side and wrenched it loose.

Here’s a picture of mom supervising.

I got tired of her staring at me so I turned her to face the wall and carried on with my work.

There was a lot of paneling.

When Brandon removed the paneling over the fireplace he found a big hole in the wall, so naturally I took a bunch of pictures of it. There was insulation inside similar to the kind of insulation in between the joists in the crawlspace in the attic. I have no idea what this material is made of. I don’t know if it’s flammable and whether or not it should be used around fireplaces. If anybody has seen this kind of insulation and knows what it is, please get in touch with me because I have no idea what I’m dealing with here.

Here’s a cool picture of the back of the wall and the chimney. I stuck my camera inside the hole, facing the ceiling, and this is what I got.

We revealed some interesting patterns of wallpaper by uncovering the walls. But what we revealed about the shapes of the painted vs. wallpapered areas has presented more questions than answers. For example, was there a chair rail in the dining room? What was hung over the fireplace that had to be wallpapered around? Same question around the dining room windows. Those areas look like there might have been something decorative or furniture-like attached to the walls there. Furthermore, to the right of the front door in the living room the whole corner was painted white on top of the wall paper. They put a strip of 2 inch wide masking tape on the wallpaper level with the top of the doorway, painted the tape and everything below it white, and left the tape up. I’m wondering if there was maybe a make-shift coat closet built there, but the walls don’t show any evidence of having had anything nailed to them there to hold up the walls. When we reveal the floor completely maybe that will give us a clue.

There were once wall sconces on either side of the dining room windows. Here’s the footprint of one:

Some parting questions for today:

• What is the brown color on the plaster walls? Is that some kind of surfacing material or old fashioned primer/sealer? It was never painted over when first installed and while parts of it have wall paper over it, the wallpaper doesn’t look like it could be original to the house.

• Is it worth it to repair the broken wall over the fireplace or will it keep destabilizing? Should we tear out that section of wall and drywall it?

And here’s the collection of little knick knacks that my mom and I found:

[tags]carpet, chair rail, closets, garbage, paneling, photos, wall sconce, wallpaper[/tags]

Last night, however, I did go to the library and do a few searches in their catalog to get a feel for where info on my house and neighborhood might be. My house sits in sort of a black hole between neighborhoods, as far as historical information goes. It’s not technically close enough to Union Park to claim the Union Park neighborhood. It’s too far north to count as Capitol Park. The plat it’s on is part of the “Union Addition” but that’s pretty meaningless to me at this point. The houses in the area are very middle class, built between 1905 and 1945. I found a few books on general Des Moines history, but one book I found right before closing is exactly what I want to read. It’s called Historical Residential Architecture in Des Moines, 1905-1940. SCORE!!! Unfortunately, it’s in the closed stacks of the library so I can’t take it home with me and pore over it repeatedly. I’ll just have to be content to visit it in the library and take notes and copies of relevant information. But the book is so great because it focuses specifically on two house types: bungalows and four-squares. I’ll be sure to share the exciting bits!

Brandon and I have a plan for the first few days of ownership. Here’s how it goes, sing along if you know the words:

Friday, Aug. 17 we close escrow and take ownership. We immediately begin clawing at the walls and floors like frantic badgers, ripping out carpet, pulling down paneling, and generally causing mayhem and destruction.

Saturday, Aug. 18 we borrow someone’s pickup truck and haul away the heap of trash we will build on Friday. (More about waste removal in a minute.)

Sunday, Aug. 19 we do additional cleanup on the place and make bundles to put out on the curb for garbage pick up.

Monday, Aug. 20 my grandma will hire the cleaning ladies to wipe everything down and give it their best on the kitchen and bathroom.

Tuesday, Aug. 21 we’ll start the tiny bit of moving in that we’re going to do: a bed and a dresser. We’re basically going to just live in the front bedroom, since that room needs the least amount of work and we need the rest of the house clear to give space to work on the woodwork and walls and everything.

And so on and so on.

So, about the waste removal thing:

When we bought my grandparents’ house in Clear Lake it was left to us to clean out all of the stuff Grandma and Grandpa didn’t need to take with them to their assisted living apartment. This amounted to 25 years’ worth of accumulated odds and ends saved fastiduously by my depression-era grandparents. We had like, five garage sales and for whatever was left that we couldn’t sell or donate somewhere, we called the local garbage company and they brought us a dumpster to fill up. It was a nice industrial sized thing that they let us keep for about a week. I think it was like $30 for the dumpster delivery and pickup, and $15 to dump it if it was under a certain weight. So like $50 max when all was said and done.

Since I’m new to Des Moines I decided to call around to see what rubbish haulers charge for their services around here. The first place I called quoted me $270. The second place said $390. I began contemplating buying a 30 cent book of matches and just setting fire to the looming pile of garbage.

Then I had an epiphany. Well, I wish it was that dramatic. It was more that I just saw the answer staring me in the face after having looked at it for weeks and weeks. As I pulled my mom’s garbage can up from the curb, I realized I was probably calling the wrong people about getting my garbage hauled away. I needed to be calling the Metro Waste Authority. Or rather, I needed to Google them. Anyway, I found out that they sell $5 stickers that you can attach to bundles of carpet and other oversized items that don’t fit in the regular garbage cans. So that’s certainly an option for us. ALSO, the landfill east of town accepts pick-up truck loads of garbage for like $16-30. So that’s what we’re going to do.

Now, tonight I have plans with two coworkers of mine, my uncle, my uncle’s pick-up truck, and a brand new dolly that my husband is going to buy after work today. My small collection of friends, relatives, and tools are going to move the washer and dryer from my other uncle’s new house to my new old house. I’ll report later on whether my plan actually functioned as it was intended.

Next Tuesday we go another round with the contractors, this time getting a quote from a big name electrician and another chimney inspection for a second opinion.

[tags]carpet, chimney, contractors, dryer, electricity, fireplace, garbage, landfill, neighborhood history, paneling, washing machine[/tags]