Monday, November 30, 2009


Today I spent all Monday at the new house. Dave's parents came over and worked. I did a few things, and a lot of observing.

All the outlets and switch covers are off the walls in preparation for painting. His mom cleaned some of the windows (one room now smells like the annoyed stinkbugs that were hiding throughout the nooks and crannies of the window - yuck!). I pulled the ugly floral contact paper off of all the linen closet shelves.

His dad spent the day cutting the window hole in the kitchen wall and it looks awesome. I'll add a picture or two soon. Can't wait until it is all finished off!

Finally, we purchased the trim paint (Antique White) and ceiling paint, and ordered new mailboxes.

Saturday, November 28, 2009


Today we finished pulling up all the staples and carpet tacks in the last two bedrooms! Dave also got it up off the landings at the tops of the stairs. Then we had the fun of cutting all the carpet and padding into smaller strips and rolling it up. We tied up the rolls with twine and Dave launched them out the back window to fall 3 stories to the driveway, where I darted out in-between falling carpet rolls to pull them into the garage. We'll attempt to discard them a roll or 2 at a time from now until we run out of places that will take them.

I also scrubbed the bathroom top to bottom and we found a shower curtain. :)

Tomorrow the floor guy comes to scope out the job. Next, a clean kitchen!

Friday, November 27, 2009

After a couple days away for a nice Thanksgiving, we drove back from Pennsylvania today, stopped home to change and went to work on the house. Tonight we pulled up more tack strips, scraped up the carpet backing paper/glue remnants, and got all the staples out of the living room, hallway, and first bedroom (office?)...

Dave's parents came by and helped appraise the wood floors, pull up staples, and start making plans to cut out a chunk of the kitchen wall for a breakfast bar window. And his dad had a great suggestion to tear out the carpet from the tops of the 2 stairwells so they could be redone to match at the same time.

Another discovery - glass panes in parts of the 2 apartment doors. Those will look really cool when we get the paint off of them.

As we were leaving tonight, the first-floor tenant leaned out the door and said (in a very accusatory tone) "Did you guys do something to the water because I have suddenly very low water pressure?!" Not even preceded by "Hi" or even "Excuse me." When we told her that we hadn't touched the water she slammed the door in our faces before we could even offer to check anything out for her. Who acts like that to a brand new landlord? Nutjob.

Working on the place was really fun tonight. The floor is coming along nicely and it feels great to be accomplishing something concrete.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Second Day

Tonight we pulled up staples and carpet-tack boards from the hardwood floor for 3 hours... looking better but lots to go. And we bought a pushbroom :)

Monday, November 23, 2009

First Day


We closed today and bought our new house. We already spent a couple hours tearing up all the carpets! Next come the staples left in the hardwood floor...