The other day, when I set up Lynn's Weblog, I considered building a weblog about our house. I knew that if I didn't I'd end up devoting copious space in this weblog to "stories" about the care and maintenance of our new house. These would inevitably prove dry, dull, and tedious to those readers who are not me. Which is most of you.
But, I didn't get that new weblog set up, so I'm going to bore you.
Kris and I just finished a l-o-n-g and exhausting fourteen hour day. We transferred three vanloads of belongings from the old house to the new house; we made a trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond (aka Purgatory); I took photographs of all the downstairs rooms (thanks for the advice, Denise!); Kris put away much of the kitchen stuff; we pulled up all of the carpet, the carpet pad, and removed all the nails; and we started work on the wallpaper. (The wallpaper does not come off like buttah.)
The work on the floor went well. The carpet came up easily, and the pad was held in with a bare minimum of staples. The floors look great, too. They're dirty, of course, and covered with various paint splatters, but they ought to finish well.
However, there were a couple of setbacks.
First, by the back porch, there are some make-shift non-oak pieces that have been incorporated into the original flooring. The current doorway is extra-wide. When the original doorway was removed, somebody also removed a few inches of wall on each side. At the floor, they patched together a fix. I'm willing to just leave those pieces, but Craig and Andrew convinced me that's a shoddy choice. So, this weekend we need to cut a space in the current floor to incorporate a new threshhold piece or two.
The second problem is all of the outlet boxes (which are set in the floor and not in the walls, by the way) stick up a half inch or so beyond the hardwood floor. They just out to the level they needed to be at for the carpeting. These will all have to be recessed somehow. I'll spend time on Friday trying to determine exactly how.
The wallpaper project is going worse than I hoped, but about as I had expected. In other words, it's going slowly. The parlor and the den have maybe two layers of wallpaper, but the dining room — the room Kris and Courtney started with — has six layers of wallpaper. In some spots, this mass of stuff comes up easily; in others, the bottom layers are firmly attached.
It's tedious work.
To make matters worse, the actual walls are not lath and plaster, as we had believed. They're not sheetrock, either. They're made some strange stuff that even Craig found a little puzzling. Dave and Karen — who dropped by for a visit — peeked in closets and dark corners, and they hyptohesize that the original walls were simply wood planks, much like the pine floors upstairs. This strange stuff between the wallpaper and the original walls is cracking in spots, and might need to be fixed. In any event, since we can't get all the wallpaper off, we're trying to develop a back-up plan. When we've stripped the wallpaper the best we can, we're going to hire somebody to skimcoat the walls, and then well paint over that.
Two final things: the house smells like an old house, especially in the utility room and the kitchen. I like old house smell, but I'd like to reduce it some. Its pretty strong. Any advice? And, finally, it's pretty clear that we're going to have a hard time juggling both houses for the next month. They each need routing maintenance on the outside (mowing, watering, weeding, etc.), but I don't think we can handle it.
Now, though, it's time to sleep. I'm exhausted.
Major thank-yous to Andrew, Courtney, Lisa, and Craig who spent their Thursday evening working on our house and giving us advice. You guys are awesome.
On this day at foldedspace.org
2003 — Progress Report My recovery continues apace, with two exceptions: exercise and sleep.
2001 — Shared Links Some links of interest.
P.S.
It's now clear that there's plenty of work for us to do this weekend. If any of you are free on Sunday, and willing to pitch in, we'd love to have your company as we complete the floor and wall projects. Just let us know if you're available!