Memorial Weekend (or the weekend to forget?)

After slogging through nearly a years worth of updates on my favorite house blog, I felt inspired to update ours. Either that or guilted into it. Yeah, that's more like it.

PK spent last weekend pulling out the old floor boards in the two front rooms, the living and dining rooms. We had ummed and ahhed about replacing it, but there were a number of factors that settled it for us.

When we pulled up the 12 inch ceramic tiles and plywood sheeting that a PO had installed, we found that the doug fir floor wasn't in as good a condition as we'd hoped. There were areas of termite damage that made parts of it dangerous to walk on. We weren't even sure the floor had been fully uncovered from when the house was built, as the grade of the wood wasn't fantastic. It had definitely been stained in the past, but for a large amount of time it seemed to have been covered with area rugs and then carpet (and then our wonderful tile).

The floor has been exposed for about a year now, and we haven't treated it with any kindness. It's had a lathe and plaster ceiling pulled down on it, paint and plaster dropped on it, and a fair share of cat pee and poop dropped on it too.

Here's the floor in it's "au naturel" state. Note one of the two pee and poop machines resting on the mantel. Your time will come, evil one.



When PK started pulling it up last weekend we realised we'd made the right decision. The wood was shot - it was difficult to get any boards up in one piece, as they kept splintering like cardboard. Many of the boards had been face nailed at some point by over zealous carpet installers (or anyone attempting to fix a squeak) which would have been a real bitch when it came to sanding and polishing.

Here's a shot of a particularly bad board.



PK managed to get a number of intact boards out which we will use to repair any further boards in the rest of the house. Based on the state of these boards we're thinking that carpet may be the way to go for the other rooms. If the boards are all crap we don't want to have to replace them - too expensive. As much as I'd love a fully wooden floored house, it won't be this one.

This weekend sees our intrepid workers installing our new/old oak flooring in the living and dining room. All that nail pulling is finally going to pay off. PK and our new found contractor Ryan are currently in the process of repairing the termite eaten boards in the sub floor, which has taken the better part of two days.





There's also a large underfloor gas heater that needed to be disconnected and covered up. It's cemented to the foundation so we won't be moving it anytime soon. Hell, who's to say that in 50 years time another overzealous home "restornovator" won't crack open the subfloor and curse us out for covering up such a post modern convienience? Stranger things have happened. In the mean time, we will cover it with sub floor and oak flooring and let them worry about it.

I'll post more later with (hopefully) laid floor boards! Yay!

P.S. In case you're wondering, we had Terminex come out and treat the house for subterranean termites. They have been coming out to spray our yard for the last 12 months (since the cucaracha and fleas incident) so we thought we'd use them for the termite issue. They did a great job, but be warned - they had to drill holes all around the perimeter of the house at 12 inch intervals to drop the poison in.

PK was home when they did it, and was most "surprized" to come round the front of the house to find them drilling holes into the porch where it meets the house. It doesn't look too bad, and faced with the alternative of termites I'll take the drill, but it did give us a shock. If we'd known that was what they would do, we would have looked into other methods. Just goes to show, make sure you know what someone is intending to do when they quote a job.