Dining Room Woes
OK, so still no pics of the outside of the house, but I might as well start my project journal. The first installment will be
So here is the dining room as we bought it:
As you can see, it has the worst carpet ever. Well, that had to go no matter what. I did peek under it when we first got a showing and saw that there was some sort of subflooring under the carpet and what looked to be hardwood. OK, great, no problem, I can pull up carpet, subfloor and refinish a wood floor no problem, how cool would that be? So the first part was to move that darn piano. My first idea was to take a couple power saws to the thing and be done with it. Awesome. The I got all guilty with people saying that it is actually really nice, and could probably be salvaged, and could be worth something. So we ended up just muscling the thing out the door and onto the back porch so it was at least out of my way (which was all I really cared about that this point anyway):
OK, so at this point the piano is out (and there was much rejoicing). Now to work on the floors. The carpet was the crappiest stuff ever; totally thin with an attached foal backer (that was shredding into a nasty dust). Underneath that, it was cleat that the subfloor was just sheets of quarter-inch cheap plywood. Of course, each sheet was put down with about 50+ 8-penny nails. Totally crazy
Also under the carpet in the future sewing room (off the dining room) we found what looked to be pretty decent hardwood, so that was encouraging.
Back in the dining room, we find the next layer under the subflooring. Granted, this was not a simple step. Those sheets were covered with nails, and often the plywood just disintegrated and came up in chinks. It was pretty hard on the old spine.
You can see in these shots the two layers of linoleum and the glue-encrusted wood underneath. Also note the busted, shredded plywood.
Luckily, the glue on both the funky pink linoleum and the wood finish linoleum was so old and dried that it came right up with very little fuss. It did make one hell of a dust cloud and we will probably shaved a good ten years off our lives breathing it
So once we go all the crap up, it was very evident that the boards underneath were totally junk and could not be saved. Dang. They were full of holes, and been patched many times over the years, and were just a mess. So I made the decision that we would have to simply lay a new subfloor and either put new hardwood down (or something).
This led to the next problem. The floor had a MAJOR dip in it. I mean major, like a good 2.5 inches. There was basically a sinkhole in the middle of the section of the house right at the doorway from the dining room to the sewing room. Tune in next time to see how our heroes deal with this challenge!!
So here is the dining room as we bought it:
As you can see, it has the worst carpet ever. Well, that had to go no matter what. I did peek under it when we first got a showing and saw that there was some sort of subflooring under the carpet and what looked to be hardwood. OK, great, no problem, I can pull up carpet, subfloor and refinish a wood floor no problem, how cool would that be? So the first part was to move that darn piano. My first idea was to take a couple power saws to the thing and be done with it. Awesome. The I got all guilty with people saying that it is actually really nice, and could probably be salvaged, and could be worth something. So we ended up just muscling the thing out the door and onto the back porch so it was at least out of my way (which was all I really cared about that this point anyway):
OK, so at this point the piano is out (and there was much rejoicing). Now to work on the floors. The carpet was the crappiest stuff ever; totally thin with an attached foal backer (that was shredding into a nasty dust). Underneath that, it was cleat that the subfloor was just sheets of quarter-inch cheap plywood. Of course, each sheet was put down with about 50+ 8-penny nails. Totally crazy
Also under the carpet in the future sewing room (off the dining room) we found what looked to be pretty decent hardwood, so that was encouraging.
Back in the dining room, we find the next layer under the subflooring. Granted, this was not a simple step. Those sheets were covered with nails, and often the plywood just disintegrated and came up in chinks. It was pretty hard on the old spine.
You can see in these shots the two layers of linoleum and the glue-encrusted wood underneath. Also note the busted, shredded plywood.
Luckily, the glue on both the funky pink linoleum and the wood finish linoleum was so old and dried that it came right up with very little fuss. It did make one hell of a dust cloud and we will probably shaved a good ten years off our lives breathing it
So once we go all the crap up, it was very evident that the boards underneath were totally junk and could not be saved. Dang. They were full of holes, and been patched many times over the years, and were just a mess. So I made the decision that we would have to simply lay a new subfloor and either put new hardwood down (or something).
This led to the next problem. The floor had a MAJOR dip in it. I mean major, like a good 2.5 inches. There was basically a sinkhole in the middle of the section of the house right at the doorway from the dining room to the sewing room. Tune in next time to see how our heroes deal with this challenge!!