Friday, June 7, 2013

Demo Week Part 1

This house never disappoints with its fun surprises. Example A below. 

Under the cat pee rug in the 3 bedrooms and hallway, was red and white linoleum tile, stapled and tarred down to the hardwood floors. I mean, who *wouldn't* look at oak floors and say, you know what this needs? A giant checkerboard on it!

As I peeled back the rug, there was whimpering.
Alot of pity inducing whimpering. Except no one was around to hear it. 

Except the squirrels.
After 3 hours of various methods of removal including an ice chipper, a shovel, chisel scrapers, multiple crowbars, and pliers for the staples, I was left with this lovely sight.
Cat pee carpet was suddenly looking much better in my mind right then.
2 of the bedrooms took 3 hours each. The last and smallest took 6 hours to do and 3 years off my life. Fortunately I then got to spend Memorial Day weekend visiting one of my best friends and drowning my sorrows in many bottles of finger lakes wine. Yey Ithaca!


Meanwhile, in the bathroom...

Tub surround tile has been removed.
The renovation from 2006 is slowly being erased, thank goodness.
 
Am I surprised that the previous renovators sheetrocked over rotting studs? Nope, not at all. Par for the frickin course. Also note the lovely electrical wires all entangled in the faucet controls. Hidden junction box under the tub? What fun! Why, it matches the one hidden in ceiling. *rolls eyes*

Onto the kitchen. Surely this will be less work, after all, it's only getting "spruced up", not gutted. AHahahahahaha.

Under the beige linoleum... Harvest Gold linoleum...
Over more of those damn red and white tiles! ARGH. Someone give me a time machine so I can go back and out law those tiles before they are installed.


"Clean under the stove?! Whyyyyyy would I do that?" - Every tenant, ever.
BECAUSE GROSS.

First layer off and we uncover a fancy "design feature" wavy edge

This floor actually came off every easily, I think the gold linoleum sticking to the red and white tiles helped? Only took me 45 minutes in the kitchen to remove the floor. Then I spent 2 1/2 hours cleaning the walls of grease and cat hair. Barf.
Before I could remove the ceiling, the wall cabinets had to come down. Same fun red paint that had been in my apartment. I'm putting beadboard over this whole wall - screw you holes and gloss paint!

Dropped ceiling removed to reveal damaged plaster ceiling. We're going to rock over this with 1/4" wallboard rather than spend 3 weeks trying to mud the plaster to look ok. Please notice the awesome way they attached the ceiling fan to the ceiling so it would be spaced correctly for the drop ceiling. Just screw multiple boxes together, it's fiiiiine.