Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Floor Diaries, Part IV

Monday 1140 hours

At last the underlying floor is revealed. It's mostly hardwood under there, which is what we hoped. But it's in pretty bad shape. Paint smudges everywhere, weird shims made out of what appear to be roof shingles, termite damage, mysterious cuts, patches made from unfinished, mismatched boards. The contractor guys are dismayed at best. They say we really need to take out this floor, and fix the subfloor, and then put a new hardwood floor on top of it. Oh, and the reasonably nice hardwood floor in the kitchen was put down directly on top of this kind of old hardwood, which is Not Done anymore. But maybe we can just ignore that for now.

Big glue patch from the font door. It appears they used to have tile right under the front door. Why they heck didn't they preserve that tile when they put in the carpet?


Why is there a deep curved slot cut into the floor underneath the carpet? Bandsaw practice? Slot cars?


I'm the next room when I hear Don say, "OK, now THAT's a problem". I come out to see that he's found this power wiring underneath the carpet with a big nail driven right through it. Is it live? Is it safe? Hmmmmm.


We expected to some evidence under the carpet of where the old room boundaries were before the house was expanded. We had hoped they did something tidier than this, but that was probably overly optimistic.

Monday, December 05, 2005

The Floor Diaries, Part III

Monday 1140 hours.

Well, the carpet is pretty much gone, and they're starting to remove the pad. We're already pessimistic about what we'll find underneath, but at least the yucky old carpet is gone, gone, gone.

The Floor Diaries, Part II

Monday 0001 hours.

I waited until the last minute, then finally packed up the stereo. We strapped the Roll-or-Kari to the Hammond and moved it to the middle of the room. It's not all done, but we're going to need help with the remaining items. Off to bed...

Sunday, December 04, 2005

The Floor Diaries, Part I

Sunday, 1700 hours.

We've just finished the Christmas Party. The last of the guests got to help me move the sofa into the garage. Pete delivered the loaner Roll-or-Kari that will make moving the Hammond tractable (God bless Pete!) Things are going pretty well, but we're fading fast.