Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Layer Game

Upstairs is officially under quarantine! 


There is still some work to be done to get everything all sealed off. I absolutely do not want any of the dust from the demo getting into the rest of the house. Demolition makes a mess, especially if you are ripping through 100 years of funk and taking everything to the studs. Lead, asbestos, coal dust, hair plaster.. my kind of fun!! I'm actually really excited for this project. We'll turn the "closet room" into a master bath, guest bath, and small guest walk-in. The master bedroom will get all tricked out and the chimney brick will be exposed. The master bath will turn into a great big walk in closet and the rest of it will be opened for the eventual open stairwell. The attic will be closed in for conditioned storage and new insulation, wiring, and ventilation throughout the upstairs. After it is all finished the upstairs will be transformed from a 3 bedroom, awkward shared bath, no storage nightmare, to a nice master and guest suite with all the amenities and plenty of storage.  

Now for the flooring layer mess.... ( negative attitude warning )

I am trying to stay positive about the renovation and keep a happy blog vibe, but immediately I found something that just really got under my skin. Like always, one of the previous owners really really screwed things up. Three out of four rooms upstairs have some kind of flooring sandwich over the original hardwoods. The guest room (blue room) just has carpet and pad over the hardwoods and that is awesome! The wood is in such good shape. I can't say the same for the other rooms. I'm guessing, but I think the bathroom goes as follows.. tile, hardibacker, linoleum, something, then hardwood. The master bedroom may be.. laminate, osb, something, something, hardwood. I had to know more so I tore up a corner in the other "closet room". I took some pics of the layers and I kept my cool all the way to layer 5.. then I lost it.  Seriously! Self Leveler?? Over the hardwood!! Luckily this rooms flooring has to all come up, but I wanted to salvage some of it to fill in other places or patch things up with. We may be able to clean the wood up after it is removed, but it will take a while. I just hope it is a little better in the rooms where I want to keep the floors intact.

The closet room stackup is as follows: 

1) Carpet              - This was a kids room upstairs so I'm ok with this carpet.


2) Carpet Pad     - Gotta have it for carpet so still ok.

3) Linoleum       - ?? Upstairs bedroom.. not a wet area.. Linoleum? I even be ok with it if it was extremely old when this stuff was all the rage, but it is fairly new linoleum. 


4) OSB               - This is where I started losing my cool. You usually don't use OSB under linoleum because of the rough surface. The unevenness of OSB can be noticeable on the surface of your linoleum. Not to mention all the screw holes into the flooring below. Honestly how rigid does this flooring installation need to be?? The only thing going through my head was, "Please don't let this be glued down."


5) Self Leveler      - What! I went bonkers! Self leveler! Seriously! Like the finished wood surface wasn't smooth enough to lay the crap OSB on!! I hate you previous owner who did this. I hate you. This was totally unnecessary. Did it really sound like a good idea to smear cement all over the wood floor? I would have rather you glued the OSB down if you were that concerned about your precious linoleum. Now I will have to spend a fortune on sanding paper or planer blades or something to get this off without ruining the wood.


6) 2 Layers Old Paint (lead)       - I expected this layer, but I was so distraught from the self leveler that I could care less.

7) Original Heart Pine Flooring!  - Yay.... restoring it is almost too much work..  :* (



3 comments:

  1. Wow what a mess! Sorry that you guys ended up with it...but the end result will be awesome! We are really enjoying reading due to our future dreams of restoring/converting an old house to a B&B. :)

    Jennie from Team Dean- Our Adventure

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