DIY & Home Improvement

The second owner took up the original carpeting and stapeled down the second-hand carpet and pad directly onto the subfloor - it took 2 hours for the kidlet's boyfriend to pull up 1400 sq ft of nasty brown shag and a 1 1/2" foam pad. Dusty as the canyon hillside underneath; the previous owner had a dog that tracked the dusty backyard in.
We found out the subfloor is MDF (which is why there's a big hole where a leak from the laundry room got into the hallway to the master bath and soft spots under windows, near sinks, and near the seams) and the linoleum was put down with a thin layer of glue that might have asbestos in it.
The first will be a pain to cut out the soft spots and put down 3/4 inch plywood in about 12 spaces, but the second is easy to deal with; we just leave the linoleum in place (except in areas where we're demo'ing the floor - the master bathroom - because we have to replace the sub-floor under the new toilet and put in a new shower and sink) and float a new floor over that. For the bathrooms , I'm thinking of just saws-alling big whole pieces of floor and linoleum together between the joists and have a shop-vac going next to me to catch any stray fibers - and everyone wears masks until it's all out of the house, and we can put plywood down for a new sub-floor.
I found the coolest black and white checker-board marble-looking vinyl tile squares on sale for both the bathrooms; since we found the structure will support tile in limited spaces (like a shower) we're going to go art-deco with white subway tiles with red and black accents, brushed nickel fixtures, and make a black table vanity with a ceramic vessel sink in the master, and mint-green and white to match the tub in the 2nd bathroom. Crunching the numbers, it's not much more expensive after the required demo to put down hardie-board, water proofing, and then tiling in a new shower as it is putting a quality plastic/fiberglass shell in, and we've got enough real-estate in the bathroom to perhaps expand the shower some and make it more ADA friendly for the future.

Next up for next week:
- replace the soft spots in the floor,
- get bids to replace five windows,
- get the new front porch and carport entry built (old ones were out of compliance, and we just got approval for our plans for the new ones).
- get the Trades bids for electrical (minor electrical, thank goodness!), plumbing (to find a small leak, rough in the new shower fixtures for the tub that are missing, fix any sink issues, and put in a new drain in the laundry-room drain pan),to clean the vents, and remove the wall oven unit (and cap off the gas line) that isn't working.
- demo the knee-wall for a useless piece of "breakfast nook", the useless make-up table in the master hallway, and part of the walls in the master hallway to give us a wide access into the master bath. Re-frame and re-panel the hallway to hide the fact we cut it open.
- start cleaning up both the new and the old homes. Prep the new home for paint and flooring.
- Pick paint colors for the rooms.
- Think about a kitchen design; we need to get a stove in where the stove-top is now, and we'll probably want to add another 3 ft. of base counter. Laz likes the idea of making a cement countertop.

The hard stuff is going to start in another two weeks.

Haele