Tis the Season

The husband and I are off and running.

Everyone have a Merry Christmas!

One Year!

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.

Just a Peek

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.

The Nightly Floor Show

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.

Below the Black Stuff

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.