The husband and I are off and running.

Everyone have a Merry Christmas!

The Husband: Do you know what tomorrow is?

Me: December 14.

The Husband: It is the one year anniversary of your blog.

Me: Really! – No, I haven’t been paying attention.

Today is one year – Shit, where has the time gone? A year ago I was standing up on the top of a parking garage taking photos for the header of this blog. It was cold and windy that day. Who knew that I would still be at it a year later. The people I have met along the way are amazing. The DIY’ers blow me away with their designs, ideas and restoration. Starting this was one of the smartest things I ever did for myself. When you live in a city that you don’t really belong in – THANK YOU DSL for bringing me all of those things that are not obtainable here.

Tuesday I am back it – the floor – yes – it awaits for me and my 5-in-1.

I took a little trip yesterday to see this:

I could get into the whole story of how it felt that the forces we’re not in my favor of me getting to my destination. Naaah, not worth ruining the moment.

We are a couple weeks behind schedule on the cabinets and the husband and I are happy about it. It takes some of the pressure off of us to complete the kitchen floor and walls within the week. The Progress of the floor has been so slow it is starting to remind me of a government project.

The floor and I needed a break from one another in order to protect the walls. I was having many thoughts of throwing the 5-in-1 to see if it would stick in our kitchen wall like a Chinese star – I would say this kind of thinking warrants a break.

This afternoon we will meet with the cabinet guy to drop off the apron front sink at our usual halfway meet up point. There appears to be a slight mis-communication, mis-understanding about how the sink actually fits with the whole cabinet. No big deal really, just some minor adjustments have to be made.

Off now to hunt down some specifications for the sink.

I thought I should show everyone how far I have gotten on the floor. It is going way tooooo slow by my standards but others are surprised that I have gotten this far. I have only been working on it for a couple hours a night, actually about 3 hours a night since Tuesday.

We started with this:

And I have gotten this far:

Can I tell you how much I hate Tar Paper – it’s the devil.

Some things I learned along the way:

-Vinegar, hot water, and a couple of drops of Dawn in a spray bottle breaks the nasty glue stuff down. I would not kid you, whatever type of glue they used – this cocktail seems to dissolve it.

-I figured out last night that if I score the heavy tar paper with the 5-in-1 that the cocktail is able to get in and help dissolve the glue which helps to lift the tar paper.

-The Iron is my best friend.

- I have yet to find anything to clean the glue off my hands.

I e-mailed Larry over at Simpson’s Folly for a conformation on the soap and water to remove black stuff and glue.  Thank you again Larry for the suggestion and the laughs.  I told Larry that if I ever heard anyone talk about gluing any flooring, of any type, that I would hit them over the head with a frying pan. This act is for the next person who will someday have to remove it.  Larry suggested that I should slather them with the glue before they wake up.  I like that idea, I like that idea a lot.

Nothing like good ole behavior modification.  Better think twice before putting any glue, on any floor  – stupid.  How in the hell do you plan on replacing that floor when it wears out?  I know – put sub floor over, glue and new floor.  WHACK – up the side of the head again with the frying pan until they utter the words – “floating floor system”.

I started at the worst possible section of our kitchen.  I knew the fools would have used heavy amounts of glue in the corner and along the edge. This is my process of what I did to remove the “Stuff” off our floors and I take no responsibility if anyone tries this on their floors.

I had my favorite hand tool, a 5-in-1.  A bucket full of hot soapy water. One empty bucket with a garbage bag for the black tar paper/glue stuff. A clean sponge – not so clean any longer. A new roll of paper towels. My best bud in the world – my friend the iron.  For this floor, the key was hot soapy water, steam to keep it hot and wet, then scrub, scrub, scrub that hot mess off as fast as possible and keep moving.

A note about the steam iron: I do not put it on the floor. I hold it about an inch over the spot that I am working on to keep it moist.

I found out early on that if the glue was allowed to get cold it becomes rather brittle – what a pain. The soapy water must be changed often, it becomes gross very quickly. Keeping the edge of you scraping device clean at all times is a must or the black tar paper glue stuff will collect on the edge making scraping difficult.

So this is how far I got in a couple hours. Things began to move quickly when I got the process down.

Today I am going to take off the rest of the woodwork and see how far I get with the cleaning of the floor. I noticed that the one baseboard is rotted out along the bottom edge. I wonder what is below that.

No shopping here folks…work, work and more work.

B wants to skim coat the walls in the kitchen. I’m okay with that.

Saturday afternoon at 3:03 we started to tear out the floor. The floor is old, it smells, it smells and it is just plain nasty. It’s gotta go.

We are looking at 3 possible options when we get it as far as it will come clean.

1) is sanding and redoing the floor
2) is painting the floor and putting a few coats of clear coat on it
3) is cork – we are waiting to see the results from the blog Chezerbey to see if cork will work. When having dogs it is important to test flooring out before making a purchase. They are running the test and we are watching and waiting for the results.

Sometimes you have to get creative when trying to remove out old flooring. My creativity came in the form of an iron. Steam and heat to soften the crap under the tile. I was concerned about using a heat gun and burning the house down, causing some chemical reaction, causing some sort of gassing. So the old iron became my very best friend for the last 24 hours. Our friend Doug brought over 2 heat guns last night and to tell you the truth I went back to the iron when one of the heat guns started melting. Nothing like the smell of burning plastic.

This floor originally had 5 layer to it 4 years ago. Carpet, carpet pad, tile, sub floor & linoleum.

We left off at the sub floor stage 4 years and it has sat like this every since.

Bye, Bye old sub floor.

Blue linoleum gone.

Remarks from the husband during this little project.
The husband: “I’m thinking sub floor”.
The husband: “You can forgive ignorance, but you cannot forgive stupidity”. “What the hell were
these people thinking”.

Let me remind everyone that it was the husbands family who built the house and his grandparents lived here. That last remark is said often around here.

Next stage is removing the rest of the black shit and the glue. I’m leaning towards rubber gloves for this. The very thought of putting my hands in any solution sends chills down my spine.

We took a mini break when a friend of ours called for an little impromptu get together. Even though we looked and probably smelled like something the cat dragged in we were grateful for the break – thank you R for getting us out of the kitchen and not minding that we looked/smell like hell. P the snacks were tasty and V I’m glad you found out that we are not people to fear – I still think that’s funny.

I need a shower and sleep. If there are any typo’s I will correct it tomorrow.

Here in the rust belt, up north, it’s a typical Thanksgiving Day – cold and starting to rain.

This is the husbands and I year to host. So I’ve been a cooking fool and the husband has been cleaning and assisting me in the kitchen. Yes, he cleans and is damn good at it.

One hour from now our home will host the husbands family.

A conversation with the husband this morning.

Me: Is it to early to drink

The Husband: No, it’s a holiday.

Me: Excellent! Drinking rules do not apply on holidays.

I rather be here.

Have a Happy Turkey Day.

A picture that tells it all…..

The husband calls him “Mr. Bloody Face Smiley Guy”. The husband has an odd sense of humor.

Update: North wall will have to be replaced. The whole wall. This will be confirmed tomorrow with “B”. While the wall is open we will see if the window frame is on its way out as well. I’m gonna say a big fat yes on that one.

Yes – in our lovely older homes nothing ever goes according to schedule.

Update: B came over to assess the north wall. The verdict is….

We are good to go with a few minor repairs. The framing is not rotted, and main material behind the plaster is stable. Back on schedule.

It’s Saturday night do you know where your 5&1 is at?

It’s late, I know, I should be in bed.

The husband and I continued to work on the kitchen this evening after taking the dogs on a 4 mile hike.

Very interesting finds tonight. Remember the beige paint? Here is what is interesting and yet very concerning. We were able to get a 5&1 on top of the beige paint, under all the other layers and pull it from the wall. For the most part this stuff started to come off in sheets. There are areas that are still adhered to the wall that we scraped down to the white primer from long ago. We have a feeling that by morning we will be able use the same technique. The beige is the very first color that was ever painted on the walls. I recall when I was stripping the old cabinet that paint stripper wouldn’t touch this stuff. So what the hell is it? What is it made of? It is a paint product from 1943-1947. Nothing adheres to this stuff. How do you seal it?

Before:

After:

The bottom of the north wall is hit. It is actually pushed out and shattered. We will have “B” come over on Monday and assess the actual damage and make a decision how far up to tear out if not the whole north wall. The material the wall is made out of has this board like stuff behind the grainy/concert with a skim coat of plaster over it. It is the board like material that is worrisome.

All in all we had gotten a lot done tonight. I am tired and I need to be up early in the morning to get a jump on this so we can prime out the walls on Tuesday. The north wall will have to be fixed right after Thanksgiving. Time is running out and we still have the damn floor to deal with prior to the install of the new kitchen cabinets.

On a happy note the pulls and latches came this week. Woooo Hoooo!

There are more photos here.

I have decided to take a 2 day break from the kitchen madness. I thought is might be wise to rest up for the weekend marathon that is going to occur when I get home tomorrow from work.

This kitchen has looked like this for about 4 years since the husband and I were burned by a cabinet maker.

My tools: 60 grit sand paper, Craftsman hand orbital sander, scrapers, 5&1’s, drywall sander, various sandpaper grits for dry wall sander, shop vac, many filters, Visqueen, soap and water.

So for your viewing pleasure this is what we are dealing with.

Texture: Once upon a time I thought this was a good idea. Actually I love the warmth that textured wall brings to a home. Taking it off – I don’t love! I told the husband that if I get some hair-brained idea like this again to remind me what it took to undo it.

Texture: Old remaining tiles that I just removed on Wednesday night.

I started with this and moved to a hand sander with 60 grit. I have become very up, close and personal with our walls, possibly a little too personal.

A walk down memory lane – past colors.

Pumpkin Spice with Buttermilk: Two color, 3 Part paint processes. I like to call it “paper toweling” off.

Seafoam Green: In the beginning the whole entire house was this color. Every single room – must have been on sale that week. Blue: This was discovered under the seafoam green. I actually like this.

Beige/ Yellow-Gold: There was a cabinet that was destroyed in the first flood that was the same color beige.

Red/cranberry: I like this color – Grandma “S” had shelving on these walls prior to the cabinets.

I started with this:

Ended up with this:

More photos in flicker.

Off to bed.