Our Summer Vacation- Part 1 -Major Flooring project

In light of the first freeze (brrr) as well as the first SNOW, I thought it might be good to reflect on some of our summer. (Currently, I have my flowers wrapped in blankets, in hopes that there are still a few good weeks left in them!)



We didn’t start up the blog until the tail end of Summer 2006, which was a very busy home renovating time, filled with many blog-worthy stories. For some, summers are meant to include time at the beach, weekends away, etc. but it is also prime time for a number of projects. (No worries, I’m sure weekends away at the beach are in the future) Every summer, we have a laundry list of items to accomplish that are best done when the temperatures outside are cooperating.

Prior to the summer, our plan after we got our tenants out (April 30th) was to commence a big flooring project in our unit. We planned to pull up all the flooring (including subfloor) in the front 2/3rds of our unit, add insulation (sooo needed with tenants!), level the floor (pretty topsy turvy up there before!), and add new flooring (carpet in the bedroom, new hardwood in the living room dining room). There were side projects associated with the flooring project including adding a couple circuits and outlets and miscellaneous work that Glenn and I would do. I had the project carefully orchestrated, coordinating with different contractors so that we’d be moved back upstairs and could have a July 1 move-in date for a new tenant.

Issue 1- Tenants floors
Well, as previously described, our dear tenants decided to self sand portions of the brand new hardwood, and really scratched up other areas of the floor. And, they were only in there for a whopping 10 months! So, we needed to sand/buff/refinish all those floors before we temporarily moved in there while work was done in our unit. No biggee-still on schedule for July 1. (I’m not new to this home renovation business-so I tacked on extra time for problems like this). It wouldn’t be THAT much work, as I’d just have the person hired to do our floor, do the rental’s floor first, then come up a couple weeks later to do the work in our unit.

Issue 2- The City Garage Department
So, I interviewed contractors and located someone to handle all the flooring issues. Signed the contract, faxed it in, then the mail came in the first week in May. The city was ordering us to repair or tear down our garage “right away.”

A reminder this was our garage when we bought the place:






I’ll explain the garage debacle in “Part 2” but, to sum it up, it was very grueling, stressful, emotionally draining, and we had 2 major projects that needed to happen “right away.”

Flooring Project
Despite all that hullabaloo with the tenants and the city grabbing our attention about another project, we were set to get started the Tuesday after Memorial Day. We brought in 3 guys from Labor Ready to handle the demo (pulling up all the old flooring and subfloor). 100 years of dirt seeping through the floor boards really made a mess! The “grime factor” was made worse by the 90 degree + heat (and of course, humidity). (ahh…those were the days…:sigh:) I was involved in overseeing them and doing my own little projects so I too became awfully dirty on day 1. At 4:45 the prospect of a shower was quite inviting-and I was anticipating when the workers would finish up.

Then, I heard the sound of breaking wood. I look over, and one of the guys is standing outside our bathroom, looking down into the bathroom below. He had stepped through the ceiling! Pushing drywall, plenty of dirt, and splinters of wood into that previously inviting shower…(our only clean, shower worthy bathroom)

A view from upstairs, looking into the bathroom:


























So, now we have the rental ceiling to fix. (which we still need to do)…And in the near term, despite my exhaustion, I would need to clean the bathroom before bathing.

In any case, the project continued on and we eventually got our new floors. Here’s a smattering of pictures from the work.



Leveling the floors, and insulation:







With leveling the floor, the transitions to the other areas are the house were a bit challenging, but i think the flooring people did a good job.

We also found some surprises in the floor, particularly underneath the flooring near where the radiator sits. The list included, a variety of spoons, an army man, and the top to a bottle.