Hard at work

I can't even begin to tell you what we went through to get our house in move-in condition. We knew we were buying a fixer-upper from the get-go. The basement needed to be handled by a professional waterproofing company and we had already set money aside for that. As far as the rest of the house, we had a game plan. We wanted to remove the yucky carpet in our new place, but before removing the carpet, we had to paint, and before we painted, we discovered had to replace some walls (yucky paneling).

The walls
Yes, you heard right, replace walls. We needed help and lots of it. We ended up hiring a couple of people to help us. After all, there is only so much my husband and I can do ourselves. Taking down some of the old, damaged paneling took time and numerous trips to the Home Depot to get all the right tools and materials for the installation of the new walls. Personally, I hated the sanding process. The dust went everywhere! We had to wear protective clothing and masks. (See photos.) Then, we were ready to prime and paint. We wanted to paint everything except the kitchen. (With all the wallpaper to remove, painting the kitchen will be a separate project for another day.) We needed help here too, but since there was no one available could help us, we ended up getting a paint sprayer to help speed up the process. As in all things, we had to learn how to use the machine and that took up a little bit of time. Once my husband got the hang of it, the process was smooth. I don't know if you know, but primer is thick, yet it dries quick. It kept clogging up the machine, probably because we used the wrong sized tip, but anyway, we got the priming done. It has a strong smell, too, so we had to wear masks. Then, we painted which was a lot quicker. I would love to say that we had fun picking out fabulous colors for our walls, but we didn't, as in, we didn't do color on our walls. These walls have too many imperfections. If we went with color, especially darker colors, the imperfections would be magnified, so we went with eggshell white all over. We will do the inside of the built-in bookcases a light khaki color and the bottom part of the walls in the dining room a nice, rich burgundy/eggplant color. I say "will do" because we just didn't have the time to do it before the move. We had to get started on getting rid of the carpet.

Can you tell that I'm not smiling?

The floors
Not surprising, when we pulled out that disgusting carpet, we found that the wood floors were in really bad shape. (By the way, I singlehandedly removed all the carpet tag, extra nails and staples all over the living room floor, second floor landing, hallway, and Liam's bedroom floor. Hooray for me!) There were huge splotches of paint everywhere and so all floors needed to be sanded. Moving day was just four days away. Our friend offered to lend us a buffer that could be used to do some light sanding, but it didn't work out. The machine went all over the place. Time was ticking. Did I mention that we were moving in four days? (Meanwhile, I wasn't even halfway done with the packing in Brooklyn, mainly because I was needed here at the house.) We knew that we would not be able to make it, so we moved our moving day to Monday, Memorial Day. We needed lots of help, so we ended up hiring a couple of people to sand the floors. We decided to stain our pine floors instead of leaving them natural, so we went with a beautiful color that has a nice mix of brown, orange and red. I would love to say that the refinishing of our floors went smoothly, but of course, it didn't. The floors took a lot longer to dry than we had anticipated. Maybe the job was rushed? Maybe some mistakes were made? I don't know. What can you do? Get angry and argue about it? We just didn't have the time or the energy to get into it. The end result is nice, definitely an improvement, so we will just leave it at that.

(Half way through sanding the living room floor)

(Sanded floor before the stain and finish)

The stairs
While the floors were being sanded, I got to work on the stairs to prep them up for the sanding. When we removed the carpet, we found that the stairs at one time were painted. Who paints wood stairs?! When the paint got ugly, a previous owner thought it would be cool to have yellow shag carpeting. I know, what a genius. When that carpet got dirty from all the heavy foot traffic, they went with purple shag carpet. When the purple shag carpeting went out of style, that's when they went with the ugly blue carpet. If removing the carpet tack wasn't strenuous enough, I must have removed a thousand staples. Do you have any idea just how difficult it was to remove the nails and the two different kinds of staples? It looked like they went crazy with the staple gun. My husband was appalled. He said that it should be illegal to do that kind of work. Ha! I was a woman on a mission, though, and I had to see the stairs staple and nail free. The guy that sanded the stairs said he only found one or two staples I had missed. Once again, hooray for me! (In the picture below, you will note some darkening on the steps, that was permanent and didn't come off with the sanding.) We still have to paint the risers white, so I will post another picture once it is done.

The basement
Meanwhile, my husband only took two weeks off to mainly be here at the house for the basement people. This operation began before anything else. There was the demolition of the paneling, the bathroom, the cedar closet, the kitchen sink and the concrete floor. Then came the "mold remediation", the installation of the French drain and the sum pump, the vapor barrier on our concrete walls and pouring of the new concrete. We were told that the foundation looks good and is completely level, no more settling. That's a relief. (Before the concrete was poured, we chose to move the plumbing to the back instead of leaving it right smack in the middle of the basement. We needed help here, too, so we ended up hiring someone to move the plumbing.) A moisture barrier also went on the ground and then the concrete was poured. Now we have a brand new, level, cement floor. They cleaned the concrete walls, sanded and cleaned every inch of wood on the ceiling, and applied a "moldicide" with a special sealer to kill the mold's roots and prevent it from ever coming back. That's a relief. So, this part of the basement project is completed. We will put up a metal frame, insulation, walls and flooring when we have the money. The air quality was tested by an independent lab that we had to choose, and the report came back saying that the basement is mold free. They tested the air quality against the air outside of our home and the basement was found to be much cleaner than outside. That's a relief.

Did I mention we bought ourselves a fun fixer-upper?

Still so much left to do. I will post it in installments with before and after pics for the full dramatic effect. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, off we go to the Home Depot. Again. The car practically drives itself there.