Reno Days 2 and 3

This week has been mostly contractors working on the house and so we haven't done a ton (and most of the work they've done has been simultaneously very expensive and completely invisible (but important--we now have no asbestos in the attic and the water pressure seems to have been fixed)).  But there has been some progress and it is so gratifying to actually see the results of work I do!

Yesterday morning Nicholas and I did a bit more carpet ripping on the way to school.  We managed to get the carpet up in the whole dining room! 

From 2014 June

And then yesterday afternoon I took Elizabeth to the house in the afternoon and pulled up all the staples in both of the chunks we had cleared.  Most of the staples weren't bad at all (way easier than I had feared based on what I had read), although there were a handful along the place where the carpet met the entry linoleum that were back breaking.  This afternoon I started on the tack strips and those are much more difficult.  Getting them up is the most difficult part of getting the carpet up so far  And the least rewarding because underneath them are all sorts of huge nail holes we need to figure out what to do about.  But since they have hundreds of tiny nails sticking out of them, they clearly have to come up sooner rather than later.

This afternoon Joe and I started working on the office, since it is the only room that can be painted without first stripping wallpaper.  It is, however, covered (completely--including the inside of the window frames!) with wood paneling.  Again, not too much visible progress because before we could start painting we had to wash the walls, sand the paneling to break up the shellack so the paint will stick, wipe off the resulting dust, and tape the edges.  I only managed to get one wall primed, but I am very encouraged by how well the primer has covered the knots.

From 2014 June

It may only need one coat of real paint!

Nicholas is insistent that he has to help take up the rest of the carpet and was very upset that there wasn't time to do it this morning, so I have promised to take him over to work on it in the morning before tee-ball.  I doubt we'll finish, but progress is progress.  And then next week I think we start on wallpaper!