Who Can Celebrate at a Time Like This....

 May 2010

 

After weeks and weeks of delays we finally closed on the house and received the keys on a Wednesday.  It was pretty anti-climatic to be truthful.  The real estate agent dropped the keys by Josh's work (he wasn't even there) and then we went and saw the house after work.  It was pretty crazy to be in. And by crazy I really mean scary, thoughts raced through my head 'you mean I own this? For better or worse?'  The past homeowner was great, he left us two glasses and a small bottle of champagne with a welcome home card.  After the whole she-bang we had to remind ourselves this was supposed to be a celebration....

 

But of course, our first goal, was not celebrating, but to rip up a corner of the 4 layers of kitchen flooring.  We were excited to find out if we had hardwoods underneath? Over our glass of champagne we removed a section using a crow bar and hammer.  Underneath, we fir floors HURRAY! It was good, because we had flooring contractors coming in the next morning to give us quotes to refinish the floors. We knew this was step one, it would be dirty and the biggest project.  We debated for about 4.5 seconds doing it ourselves.  But, we had three weeks to move in, 1250 sqft of floor, and too many horror stories to think about this being a diy project.   Luckily, we found a great company to take over and they were willing to start on Monday.  

 

 

However, they were not willing to remove the 4 layers of flooring in the kitchen, turns out it could be asbestos and honestly, I don't think they wanted to do it.  So without really knowing it we had our first project and our tightest deadline to date.  We had until Monday AM to remove the flooring.  Equipped with crow bars, pliers, and knee boards we went to town.  Only to realize what a daunting task 250 sqft of flooring can be.  For two 10 hour days we removed flooring on our knees.  There was two layers of linoleum floors, particle board and the original handpainted flooring on burlap. Josh pulled out roughly 2000 staples by hand.  We listened to music, we did books on tape, we laughed, we got too tired to even talk. In the end, we finished and I remember those two days more than any of the others.