Someone's been ripping up my house....

December 6, 2010

I went to the house today with big dreams of tearing down the rest of the hallway, but someone much faster than me apparently got to it first. Here it was when I arrived:








I went back to the not as much fun job of peeling off wallpaper. While I waited for the steamer to start steaming, I worked on removing random things from the walls in the apartment.

Lovely, old carbon monoxide detector screwed directly into butternut wood


This wood was obviously a tan color at some point


Old buttons under the cover pictured above


I also took down this lovely thing. We were asked if it was used to hold "hippie beads."

My mom came later and joined me. Here it was when we started:

Well, this was not peeled at all. This was almost the start. As you can see by my mom's earmuffs, it's a bit cold in the apartment. This is partially due to the lack of insulation. Bruenings is adding in new vents in here tomorrow (there are only 2 for the whole apartment area).





And when we finished:





My mom said peeling wallpaper off this wall is like peeling 14,000 pieces of gum out of someone's hair.

Alok was working on taking the molding off the floor in the apartment. Some of it appears to be original (although in very bad shape and some was termite eaten) and some was added later. Some it has also now been trapped by the wood floors, which raises the question of how to remove it and not ruin it or the floor. Hmmmm.....


Alok trying to get the nails out


Boards being ruined by trying to take the nails out


Peeling off molding


Pulling off molding


This is original molding, partially hidden by the new floor


The lovely piece of wood on the floor in front was used as trim to cover up what was going on. Alok used a saw to try to cut the nails off so he could pull it straight up, but there are nails along the bottom he can't reach.

Speaking of floors, here is the new subfloor. At least we won't fall through it.

New subfloor, post molding removal


View from below

In other news, we have a bit of a plumbing issue here, with these pipes (the former bathtub pipes in the apartment) literally filling about a bucket of water when you use the kitchen sink. Why? I don't know.

Lovely pipes (view from the pantry into the bathroom)

That's about all.

Jessica