It is Feb in MN & things just aren't right. We arrived on Valentine's Day back in (freezing) MN...except it wasn't freezing! We had to shovel our drive way but, by the end of that week-no flipping snow & warm sunshine!
So bazaar.
Ryan & I are moving back to MN from MA here soon. We have a ton of work cut out for us to get our home ready so when we do move back we can enjoy our CLEAN, newly done home and our new fur child. If you have missed it, we rented out our home & it was a disaster! I have not shared the entire story with you because...well I can't yet but man, this past year of renting was brutal! So, we are re-doing our flooring, painting, and fixing other things that have been mistreated -aka, ruined by our previous tenant.
So like I said earlier, we flew out to MN on Valentine's Day. To get things started off nicely, we had a bit of some miscommunication and my bag (with everything in it) was left in our Uber we took at 3am! We both arrived to MN separately around noon and met near the tram where Ryan asked me where my bag was. I replied with you have it...but he didn't. Okay, so sucks but whatever I can buy some clothes to get by. So we handled that, went to Lowes for some tools and other materials for the house. We pull up to our house and see we have some shoveling to do. While getting ready to do that I asked Ryan if he had the key. Nope, no key, we left that in Boston too! Guys, this is totally not like us!! We both said to each other that we must be more stressed than we think to mess up this bad! Luckily our neighbor was just leaving and had an extra key! One thing going for us.
We finally get into our house & admire the dirtiness/rudeness that our tenant had left for us. Our garaged filled with 20 trash bags full of beer and food with some random household items. At this point it is rather late in the day and we had so much to do before the cleaners arrive on Monday at 8:30 am so we got right to work. Carpeted areas (besides basement) all came up & we had our fair share of rookie mistakes.
See that darker area? Yeah...you can see the actual layout of how our tenant had the furniture!
They were only in our home for just about 11 months (4 of them not paid!!!)
Day 1 Project: Getting the smelly & dirty carpet up & out
Tools:
Utility Knife
Flat Head Screw Driver
Gloves
Crowbar
Mask
Rubber Sole Boots or Shoes*
The Process:
- Prep work: obviously move everything off your carpeted area that you plan to take up. Also, depending on your carpet condition, things can get pretty messy so move everything and anything you do no want covered in carpet dust/dirt. Remove any floor vents as well. Trim! All your trim has to go. We used our Flathead and crowbar to remove our trim. We are planning to reuse our trim or have no trim until we can get the style we want. I tell you this because we had to be careful when taking it off but if you are not planning to keep and reuse it, who cares if they break, just get them off! The trim in nailed in so you get to take out all of the nails that do not come out with the trim...so fun! Ryan used a cloth and crowbar to wedge and create distance with the extremely long nails! This helped us from adding holes to our sheet rock...which we did many times before he figure out this little helpful tip.
- We found a loose area near the vent that we could use to start pulling up the carpeting. Our utility knife became a great friend for this project. (the photo above you can see the area we started)
- Cut it into pieces that are easy to roll and pick up.
- The underlayment comes right up maybe leaving a few chunks here and there in the staples. Oh the staples! We had hundred of staples to pull up. It started off rough until we got the hang of it. A flat head screw driver and a crowbar where the only tools we used for this.
- So when you take up carpet and underlayment you will find a nail party underneath. We have OSB/Plywood underneath and it was loaded with nails, staples and the prickly tack strips. We watched a YouTube video or two but read a little bet here and there on about this process but nothing too extensive.
- Taking up the staples took forever but the tack strips were the ones I truly did not enjoy doing. After about 1 1/2 hours of working on tack strips, Ryan found a method that worked like a charm! You slide the Flathead right at where the nail head is, get it under the wood pretty good and than had your crowbar to the mix sliding under the wood but above your Flathead.
My knees and lower back were (are still) a mess! - I choose to wear a mask the first day when we did the main part of getting the carpets up. I am so glad I did! Ryan woke up a mess! I didn't feel amazing by any means but way better than he did :)
- *I had staples in my shoes so make sure you have some thick soles to protect your feet from getting some nasty nails or staples in them!
After hours of getting carpets filled with dust, dirt, animal hair and who knows what else plus all the damn staples and nails- we did it! All carpet is up, all staples & tack boards are up & the prickly tack strips are gone.
BEFORE
AFTER
We are putting Bamboo flooring in and are beyond excited! We searched and search around, orders samples from all over. Build Direct was amazing! We got our samples within 2 days and they are super helpful! We ending up choosing them due to the quick responses and we fell in love with this dark bamboo! Originally, we planned to do the lighter bamboo in the bedrooms but after seeing the dark with our newly panted walls were were hooked- all dark it is!
Our house was left a complete mess, smelling like animals, stains on the carpets and just so much more filth. The carpets were really just the tip of the ice berg for our home projects. Being in the house for 6 days left me with headaches, stuffy nose, runny eyes, a sore throat and feeling so yucky! We hope that the new flooring will not only be beautiful but benefit us with allergies and keeping our home clean as a whistle!
Don't miss my TOP 5 EVERYDAY ACCESSORIES on the TOM & Orrow BLOG today.
Exhausted but still much love,
Amanda
No comments :
Post a Comment