Controlled Chaos

We're on track. That's what I keep telling myself. Well, I know it will be fine, so it's more like I am telling Sarah that we can host x-mas eve without any problems.


So, where are we? This past weekend I got help from cousin John. I gotta say, having another set of hands around for the heavy lifting is a good thing. First we carried out the two huge piles of pine hardwood floor that I had ripped up a few nights earlier.

We brought it out to the driveway as I had a guy picking it up on Sunday morning. If you're ever looking to get rid of anything, just put it on Craigslist. Someone will take it. In this case, a non profit environmental protection agency was interested in the flooring to restore some offices. They took it away and gave me a receipt to use as a tax writeoff. Score!


After carrying the flooring down three flights of stairs, I cut out the subfloor. John would follow me and stack the wood and vacuum up all mess collecting on the ceiling below. This will go a long way when we tear that ceiling out.

We found some interesting things along the way. Here's a little rat poison.

It looks as though whatever rats did not eat the poison were big fans of the game Monopoly, as we found many game pieces in the floor. Get out of jail free? I'm hanging on to that one!

We bagged the subfloor as my his father wanted it to burn. So we basically got rid of 400+ sq ft of waste, for nothing. No dumpster rental. No angry garbage men. Double score!

We cut the floor back just far enough to see where the floor joists sit on the supporting wall. The plan is to replace the 2x6 joists with 2x8. We can't do this until we're ready to tear up the ceiling below. I've given Sarah my word that we'll have ceilings for the holidays, so we're in a bit of a holding pattern right now.

Good news is there is enough floor left in Bedroom #2 for storage. So I lugged the 12 boxes of our new floor out of the dining room and into the bedroom. Sarah helped by making hand made Christmas cards. If you're reading this blog, you'll be getting one soon! She did offer encouraging words such as "Wow! That looks heavy!" When I took a breather on the steps she said something along the lines of "are you gonna make it?" I did!

On the plate right now:
Getting organized for the holiday
Getting ready for our new appliances! (WHAAAT!?! that will be the next entry)
Getting a time table set just after the hoilday for the rest of the upstairs project
and of course, continuing to control the chaos!