House Progress
I’ve ripped out all the carpet and pad, down to the concrete floor underneath.
Step One: Cut the carpet into manageable sized chunks and roll them up.
Step Two: Roll up the pad, trying to leave as little pad glued to the concrete as possible. (Click for a close-up of the pad. It’s gross.)
Step Three: Take all the carpet and pad to the garage, where Preston can decide what to do with it. Wonder how to clean all the stains off the concrete.
Step Four: Decide to ignore the concrete floor situation and work on the bathroom walls. Here’s what comes off the walls when I wash them. It’s even grosser in person. When the nicotine gets disturbed, it releases big wafts of smell. Maybe we should get Mike Rowe to come help us out with this. It is definitely a dirty job. This handful of rags came from one small bathroom wall.
Step Five: After all the walls are cleaned, start applying primer. At this stage, I realized that the walls are actually painted brown. Whose idea was it to paint the whole damn house the same brown color? Even the ceiling.
Since the last photo, we’ve started primering the ceiling and living room walls, Preston is working on removing baseboards and the tack strips left from the carpet, and the rest of the bathroom is painted, except for the trim. We’re doing away with all the dark brown trim. It all has to be painted over anyway, since EVERY SINGLE SURFACE is imbedded with cigarette smoke, so we’re going to do all the trim in the house white. Except Preston’s room, which will have white walls and dark blue trim, and mine which will have mostly white walls and pink trim.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Yes, I think this definitely qualifies as an official dirty job.
April 13th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Hmm…..I didn’t think of it til I saw the brown grout but have you thought about having to clean the grout? If the grout hasn’t been sealed in a while, I bet that smoke residue is in there too….
In any case, it would be a good idea to clean the grout and seal it. The grout sealer is liquid and comes in a tube with an sponge type applicator tip and you just apply it and let it dry. You can clean grout with bleach water though some people don’t recommend it as it is somewhat harsh but it does a good job and is cheap. You can look into other kinds of grout cleaner too and see what you think. But sealing the grout is really important and it’s supposed to be sealed once each year. But you don’t want to seal it til it’s clean.