A "New" Floor and a Fun Discovery!

Tonight we ripped up the ugly blue wall-to-wall carpeting in the Twilight Room. Yuck. Good riddance! Blue is one of my favorite colors, but this rug had to be one of the most obnoxious things in the world! Especially when combined with the maroon, pink, and black that was on the walls when we bought it. Ick.

Our original plan for the room was to rip up the blue carpet and have someone come in and install new wall-to-wall carpeting, in a much more neutral color... off-white or a light tan or something. A couple years ago, R peeled up the carpet in the closet and discovered (sadly) that there was plywood underneath. It's a little strange that this is the one room in the house with wall-to-wall carpet, but we've found evidence that part of the room used to be a bathroom, so we assumed that the original floor must have been damaged by water or something.

Tonight we went through a wide range of emotions. When R started ripping up the carpet, he discovered that underneath 3/4 of the room was 2" wide maple flooring. It is in dire need of refinishing, but hey, it's better than carpeting! It'll look so much nicer than carpeting, in that it will somewhat match the rest of the house.

This new discovery was exciting for oh, about 5 minutes, until R got to the door and the 2" flooring ended and plywood began. The 2" flooring ran the whole length of the room except for 18" in front of the door. Still trying to be optimistic, we decided we'd just buy new 2" flooring, weave it in there and stain it all to match. Problem solved. Until we kept going and the plywood went all in front of the closet and into the closet and all along the back wall, about 3' into the room. Ugh. There was too much plywood for it to make sense to take it all up and install new 2" flooring. So we're back to let's just leave it and get new wall-to-wall carpeting.

While R was rolling up the carpet, I realized that the plywood/2" flooring was still about 3/4" taller than the floor in my office. So the plywood was on top of something that was level with the original flooring in the rest of the upstairs. So out came the crowbars. Underneath the plywood was flooring that matched and lined up with the flooring in my office. We got so excited! Who wants 2" flooring when the original wide board flooring is underneath!?! We kept going, tearing up a couple strips of the 2" flooring, to make sure the wide board flooring kept going. It did. That's also when we discovered this:

Between the 2" flooring and the original flooring are old newspapers from December 1942! So far we've found The New Britain Herald and The Hartford Courant. Some parts of the papers are really fragile and thin, and since we didn't know they were there, they got ripped. We're planning on being really careful in the rest of the room so we can keep it all.

There was also a hole in the floor, which we're planning on patching using some flooring from the attic. It's about the same size as the patched hole in the Guest Room floor, which we've guessed used to be a vent that brought heat into the Guest Room from the Dining Room after the GR fireplace was removed. Since the Twilight Room doesn't have a fireplace, we're assuming that there was another vent in here to bring heat into the room.

Another weird coincidence.... we were discussing the blue carpeting while R was tearing it up. When we moved in and I vacuumed it, it reacted like a brand new carpet would. I commented that it was like it had never been vacuumed before... like it had just been put in. When we were tearing it up tonight, I told R to be on the lookout for a sticker with an install date on it. My guess was 2008. Turns out I was right. Not only was it 2008, but creepily, it was March 6, 2008. Our baby's due date is March 6, 2013, exactly 5 years later. Creepy :)

Goodbye Old Floor

Today was a little bit of a mis-match of work, at least for me. R was in the kitchen removing the last pieces of old plywood while I sanded the walls (still! It's never-ending!). However, I didn't last very long. I have asthma and the dust from sanding from the dust being kicked up from the plywood and the saw R was using were starting to really bother me. I went outside to get some fresh air and ended up working on my sidewalk some more.

Yes. I'm still not done. I had a good rhythm going when I first started, but then the kitchen schedule took over and I wasn't able to dedicate an entire weekend to the sidewalk anymore. My dad came a couple weeks ago to help me dig out the area between the lean-to and garage, but then it rained one weekend, then it was a rare humid October day... you get the picture.

This afternoon I was able to get around the corner and past the rock that was giving us a problem (this whole area was filled with buried rocks and buried broken dishes and cups... however, this rock, it turned out, was supporting some of the random rocks that are helping to hold up our lean-to. We're planning on tearing down the lean-to, putting in an actual foundation and rebuilding it next summer). At first I was thinking I'd just go around it for now and next year when we took apart the lean-to, I'd put in the missing bricks. But now I really like how it looks and am considering doing it in a couple other places as well :)

Then I ran out of bricks. Oh well.. until next weekend...

While I was doing all of this, R made good progress in the kitchen. You'll remember that we did half of the plywood last Sunday, and this weekend we did the cabinet side of the kitchen. It was not as easy as the other side (hence it taking almost 2 days). The sub-floor on this side of the kitchen wasn't the old, original flooring.. maybe it had too much water damage or something, but it looks like it was removed around the 50's (helping to solidify our idea that that was when the last major work was done on the house) and "new" 6" boards were put in its place.

Another issue he was having was under the cabinets. He couldn't get the saw in all the way, so we still have old plywood for about 3" under the toe-kick.. and we also left it under the dishwasher (technically it's new there because we had to replace it last fall) and under the stove. Also, because we ran out of time and weren't able to get the new plywood down, our stove was left out in the middle of the kitchen... which means tonight was the first night of a week of take-out (tonight it was pizza. We tried a new place... it wasn't that good).

Paint Removal

While R was being a weekend electrician, I was removing paint. With my mom's voice in my head saying "the house needs to look different!!", I decided now was also the time to FINALLY finish the Living Room! Last fall, my sisters-in-law came to visit and the three of us painted the Living Room. We painted the trim white and picked a paint color on impulse for the walls (which I now love!). However, while they were painting the crown molding and summer beam, I was examining the door and window trim, and fireplace. They were not in good shape. They were beat up, scratched, dented and had many layers of paint glopped on them. After asking everyone's opinion and R trying to see if we could sand it, we decided to work around them for now and I'd remove the paint another day. Because the paint is crackling on the window sills in a way that makes me think it is lead paint, I decided to be cautious. I bought something called Peel Away 1 from Home Depot, which says it's a safe way to remove lead paint (or any paint). It removes up to 33 layers of paint in one application. You spread the paste onto the surface, then cover it with the supplied paper and leave it for up to 24 hours. Then come back and peel away the paper and all of the paint goes with it. It's a safe way to remove  lead paint because it contains it and you don't get any dust in the air. However..... reading the label scared me. It basically said you needed to be wearing a Haz-Mat suit while using it. The directions made it seem like your skin would burst into flames if you even looked directly at it. So I kept putting it off. I asked R if he would do the test spot, so I could see what it was like. But, another thing the directions said was that you should wear long pants, long sleeves and gloves, and tape your sleeves and pant legs around your wrists/ankles. It was way too hot here in the summer to do that. And in the winter it was too cold so we couldn't have the windows open to get rid of the smell. So I decided to wait until it was cooler. Enter this weekend.

The label was full of crap. Not that you should ignore safety precautions, but I accidentally got some of the paste on my finger and I was fine. Everything I read online said that it would instantly burn you, but I didn't feel anything. I washed it off and was fine. I started with the fireplace mantle. It took me about 45 minutes to get the paste on there and then apply the paper. It's definitely not a quick job! I had hoped to get the whole fireplace done in that time.

Sunday morning I applied the paste to the surround right below the mantle. R kept calling me needing my help with pulling wire through walls, turning off breakers, etc. I'd be gone for 5 minutes and come back and all of the paste had slid down to the bottom. So I'd curse him and try it again. A couple hours later, I was done with that section. I was too tired to move on to the sides, so I took a break and went outside to put together some nesting boxes for the hens. When I came back, all of the paste and paper had slid down to the bottom. I said forget it (the top 2 or 3 inches were left uncovered now).

I got to work removing the paper on the mantle. It was amazing! It left a mess.... but underneath the nasty black goop was pretty wood (I was this close to changing my mind and staining it. Then I remember that 1) I don't like that look and 2) it doesn't fit with our house).

This is what's left after you peel away the paper. According to the company, it's the chemicals liquefying the paint.

After scraping off some of the goop, you're suppose to use a scrubber (I used a Scotch-Brite pad) to scrape away the gray... I don't know what and what ever paint is left on the surface. Then using a squirt bottle and a paper towel, I washed away the gray stuff. It is extremely messy!! But the finished result is awesome!

I had to go back and re-do that section in front (I tried removing the paper earlier than 24 hours... I think that was around 18 hours or so... it was obviously too soon. It removed not even half of the paint, whereas the full 24 hours on the other side removed basically all of the paint).

My sisters-in-law are coming to visit in a week and a half and I'm trying to have all the paint removed by then so we can finish up this room. At the rate I'm going, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it. I'm hoping the door and window trim will be easier and quicker.

Me & A Pick Axe

Today I tore up the back sidewalk... With a pick axe (which is an awesome tool btw). The sidewalk was asphalt, but wasn't installed correctly, so it wasn't too hard to tear up. Most pieces came up in smaller 4"ish pieces, but toward the garage they came up in huge huge pieces (like 2'x2' or larger).

Unfortunately it was wicked hot and humid this weekend, so I'd work for like a half hour and then have to go inside and rest for awhile. It took me all day to tear up the sidewalk (all that's left is the little bit between the lean-to and garage), which is about 32 feet long (not including between the lean-to and garage).

Tearin' Up My... Floor

One of our Christmas gifts from my mom is an oscillating tool to tear up the remaining linoleum in the Kitchen. It's a small electrical tool with different attachments for things such as cutting wood floors, tearing up vinyl/linoleum, and sanding. The one we were interested in is about 3" wide, and slightly curved. When turned on, it vibrates back and forth, pulling up the linoleum.

It works like magic! This is the floor that I spent two full days on over the summer. I was sweating like crazy, working as hard as I could, and after two days I got up about 6 square feet of the stuff... and that was only the top layer! The adhesive was still stuck to the plywood in most places! And since then, we've been living with a disgusting floor that is two different kinds of linoleum, plywood, and nasty white-ish adhesive.


I spent about 5 hours today using our new magical tool. I kept having to take breaks though because it is extremely loud (making my ears right) and vibrates a lot (my hands were shaking). But I got up all of the leftover adhesive in front of the fireplace, plus most of the linoleum and adhesive in front of the windows, hutch and stairs. I was so proud of myself! As tired as I am, I can't wait to get back at it tomorrow! Despite the horrible aches and pains I have from having to crouch on the floor for 5 hours..

Our New Door

The back door, in the Kitchen, is the door we use to get in and out of the house. We changed the locks on the closing day, which made it easier to unlock, but getting the door physically open has always been a problem. You have to turn the handle, lift the door, and kick it with your foot to get it open. I foresee a problem when it's raining out and I'm getting home from work. SO... since we couldn't do the Kitchen this weekend as planned, we decided to replace the door.

And since nothing is easy in this house, this quick switch turned into a day-long project. My dad, uncle and Ryan took the original door off, only to discover that the sill was completely rotted out. Well, we can't put a brand new door on top of that! Enter Lowe's trip #1 of the day (they know me there now... it's pretty sad). A couple hours later, we had a brand new sill, complete with flashing and insulation!

Yesterday when my dad and I bought the door, I decided that I wanted a door with full glass. When we were taking down the cabinets and drywall, the back door was completely open and I realized how much light came in from the backyard and loved it. I didn't really like the Dutch door, other than the advantage that we could have the top open to let in light and air while the bottom was closed to contain a certain puppy. But I told myself that if the full glass door was too expensive, for now I'd have to settle on a new door with only glass on the top half. Well, in the already blessed trip to Lowe's (my $50 window), we discovered that the full glass door was only $10 more than the half glass. No-brainer!

The door is absolutely beautiful! I'm so in love with it! And Madison loves it too! She loves being able to see people outside, and just simply sitting in front of it staring out at the birds and squirrels in the backyard. And the light in the Kitchen now is great. And the views! The door lines up perfectly with the doorway into the Dining Room, so now you have nice backyard views from the Dining Room too. And it looks great with the new oil-rubbed bronze door hardware we bought the day we closed (and it's awesome to have a deadbolt on the house now). I'm loving my house! :)

My Office

While the guys were downstairs working on the sill and the door, I was upstairs painting my office. Last night at Lowe's (Trip #4 for Saturday), I picked out a paint color spontaneously with my mom. It's a really light, bright color, which will make the space seem bigger. Add that with the soon-to-be white trim, and you have a beautiful office space!

So remember when I said how easy it was to take down the wallpaper in the office? I thought it would take a whole day and it only took about 2 hours. Well, the room made up for that time we thought we gained. It's taking about 4 coats of white to cover the trim, which is fun, especially on the built-in bookcase and the fireplace. And for the walls, I have to wash them with TSP, then sand them to get rid of the leftover pieces of wallpaper, then wash them again, then fill in the holes and imperfections, then sand again. Five hours later, I get to paint that wall. AHHH! AND, the beams have peeling paint on them, so if it's lead paint, it'll need to get removed, or if it's not, it'll need to get sanded. Either way, it's not something I could do today.

This is all I got done today. All day. This room is going to drive me crazy!


Oh, and look what my uncle found in the walls of the Kitchen... Cute, huh?

Kitchen Demolition

Today with the help of my dad and uncle, we demolished our Kitchen. It felt great! I tell ya... if you're ever having a bad day and need to let off some steam, pick up a crowbar and tear down drywall! Great stress reliever! My uncle brought his saws-all and went a little crazy on the cabinets, so we had the nastiness out of the house in about an hour!

Of course, we found a couple unexpected things. The first being the open electrical box that was behind the dishwasher, with live wires sticking out of it. Lovely. Luckily we have an electrician coming in this week, so he'll take care of that for us. The dishwasher wasn't even hooked up to that.. it was hardwired through the floor (as was the stove). Again, it'll all be taken care of, thank God. Electrical stuff scares me.

Another minor problem we found was the floor beneath the sink cabinet. Not only was it disgusting and filled with dirt, acorns, toys, food wrappers, bottle caps, and BONES (mice and other larger somethings...), but the plywood was completely rotted. So we made our first Lowe's trip of the day and got some new plywood.

Next came tearing down the drywall. My dad kept trying to talk me out of it, but I'm glad I insisted on tearing it down. In all of the other rooms we've been leaving the plaster and/or drywall and just painting over it for now, due to our tight moving-in schedule. But in the Kitchen, the wallpaper was fused to the drywall and would not come off. No matter what we tried. And it was old and yucky, and I'm sorry, but Kitchens need to be clean (ok, according to me, everything needs to be clean, but Kitchens especially). There isn't a ton of drywall in the Kitchen because there are so many openings and the huge fireplace, so it wouldn't be that bad. As soon as all of the drywall was down and out of the house, everyone agreed with me. The horrible smell that had been in the Kitchen was now completely gone. The smell was probably a mixture of moldy drywall, mouse poop in the cabinets and the rotten floor. All of which are now in the backyard in a portable dumpster. And we got the pleasure of seeing what the walls in the Kitchen used to look like.... very very wide, very very detailed wood panels. Yet more proof of the Wilcox's wealth.

Old wallpaper, also showing where the original wall was (the back half of the house was originally split up into three rooms).

My backyard

And this is when we hit the major snag of the day. Electrical outlets. There weren't enough in the Kitchen, both for code requirements and for S's small appliance requirements.  So we had to call an electrician to run some new wires for a bunch of new GFCI outlets as well as outlets for the dishwasher, microwave/hood and stove. And why not throw in some new wall switches while we're at it. So here's the problem. It's the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. We're not going to get anyone in this weekend. So this ruins our plans. We had 3 days straight to work on the Kitchen and get it done, but now we have nothing we can do. We can't move forward with anything until the electrical is done (No drywall, no floor, no cabinets, no paint, no trim, etc, etc, etc).

So, you ask, what did we do? We found stuff to do (not hard to do in a 239 year old house). Today we decided to replace the one old window in the house. It was left, most likely, because it was a taller window, and the Kitchen cabinets had been installed right in front of it. Turns out, it was also open, letting in more smells and mice. Woohoo. Enter Lowe's trip #2 of the day. My dad and I went in search of a matching window, but in a shorter size, so that it would fit above the base cabinets. All we could find in that size were windows without an mullions, or with a 4/4 grid. I can't do that when the rest of the windows are 6/6 and it would be very very obvious if this one was different. So I set off wandering around the store looking for someone to help me (which never happened... one guy said the window guy was on his lunch break, and he'd send someone else over to help. No one ever showed up). On my way back to my dad I noticed a window on a cart in the back of the store. No label, but it appeared to be the correct size. After arguing over the windows some more, we decided to go look at doors instead (to replace the back door that is impossible to open). Now my dad sees the window, and discovers a tiny price tag on the top. It was a special order that was returned. Originally $239... we get it for $50! Now that's a great deal!

Before

After

The Kitchen at the end of the day

Removing the Center Cabinet

Today while Ryan cut the grass I attempted to get rid of some more "brick". I didn't get very far. I've been using a crowbar, and Ryan bought me something at Lowe's that he thought would have been perfect, but frankly, the crowbar works better. Not by much though.

When Ryan was done outside, we removed the center cabinet. It was nasty underneath there! Worse than the top of the cabinet, which we thought was really bad. We did find some cool stuff though, including an old Bayer aspirin tin... complete with 2 aspirins! It must be really old because my mom doesn't remember it.. so it must be from at least the early 50's. We also found a million dead bugs, rat poison, dust, garbage, pennies...

Tearing up the Kitchen Floor

When we first met with the seller, he told us that the only thing he had ever done in the house (in the 45 years he lived there) was the Kitchen floor. The Kitchen floor was a linoleum floor with a brick patten. It matched so nicely with the brick hearth. (insert sarcasm) The floor was so incredibly disgusting. I refused to walk on it without shoes on, and even then I didn't like to spend too much time standing on it. It looked like the last time it was vacuumed or swept was in 1976. Any little bit of work we did in the Kitchen only managed to make it look worse. See that gray area? That's the dirt that had accumulated underneath the rug. Gross gross gross!

The Kitchen floor is raised up from the Hall/Living Room floor, which lead me to believe that the "brick" was actually installed on plywood, on top of the wood floor. I've always wanted a wood floor in my Kitchen. I tore up the metal threshold between the Hall and Kitchen only to find out that there was indeed wood flooring beneath the plywood. And it was level with the Hall floor. Which meant that at least one piece of plywood was coming up so we could investigate. But first I had to remove the linoleum. Which did not want to come up! Scraping, pulling, more scraping... This is the best I could do, after a whole day's work.

Luckily I was able to uncover almost an entire sheet of plywood, which made removing it about 1% easier. It took 2 guys a half hour to lift that thing, which was nailed into the wood floor every 6 inches or so! Unfortunately this story does not have a happy ending.

The floor underneath is indeed wide plank wood flooring that is identical to the Hall and Living Room floors. But it's pretty badly damaged. It's very soft... like it was wet, but it isn't. I could stand on it, but I didn't feel safe enough to have it as a floor. Plus it was very wavy (think wet paper that has dried).

I don't think I can fully express my disappointment. We have 2 options. 1: Put the plywood back and install a new floor on top of it. 2: Tear up all of the plywood and wood flooring, install a new plywood subfloor and new floor on top of that. Well, in case you can't guess, I was outnumbered. So the plywood is going back down and when we install a new floor, it'll be on top of that. That'll make the Kitchen floor about 1/4" higher than the Dining Room floor, but we'll make it work. It's not like anything else in the house is level!

Kitchen Demo Day 1

Our Kitchen extends for about 3/4 of the back half of the house. That's a pretty large Kitchen. But it doesn't feel big. In fact it feels small, dark and cramped. Today, we took the first step toward fixing that.

To give you a better idea of what we're working with here, this is what we have. We have half of the Kitchen as an eat-in breakfast area. I love this part of the Kitchen. I've always wanted to have a Kitchen table. This half of the Kitchen has two large windows, a HUGE fireplace, plenty of room for a large Kitchen table, a built-in cabinet with shelves and cabinet doors below, plus the door to the back stairs and an opening into the hall. The other half of the Kitchen has all of the appliances and cabinets, two more smaller windows, an opening to the Dining Room and a Dutch door that leads to the backyard.


Separating the two areas is this:

The bane of my existence. I hate this thing! It ruins my big Kitchen! And it's so old and gross. The cabinets don't have any shelves in them, and open on both sides. Half of the drawers open on one side, and the other half open on the other side. All are filled with garbage, papers, phone books, tools, bowls, plastic silverware.. And it's right next to the door, so after struggling to open that pain of a door, you feel squished and cramped as you enter the house. And this is the door we will be using on a daily basis. It (the cabinet, well, the door too) had to go. Sure, someone back in the 50's thought it was a great idea. It's a tough Kitchen for cabinetry because there are so many windows and doors, and the only long wall is taken up by the cooking fireplace.

Goodbye. Good riddance. It was pretty easy to take down.. the only problem was a stray crowbar making a hole in the ceiling, but that's easy to fix. It was the top of the cabinet that was the most disgusting.. it was covered in about 60 years of dust, dirt and mouse poop. No wonder the Kitchen smells so bad!

Since they were on such a roll, the guys decided to also take down some of the other upper cabinets and cabinet doors off of the lower cabinets to make Demo Day Part 2 easier. We also learned how the mice had been getting into the Kitchen (though lucky we haven't been graced by their presence (knock on wood), they left plenty of evidence that they had been there in the past). The corner pantry cabinet had a hole in the floor beneath it that had been cut to run wiring up from the basement to an outlet on the corner post. A mouse (mice) had been squeezing through the hole next to the wire, and in doing so had frayed the wire. So unsafe! Good thing we saw this before we ever used this outlet! This wiring also went to the stove, which was plugged in so we could use the clock on it. That also got unplugged.