Carpet
This is a shot of the wall to wall carpeting the house came with. The carpeting lasted until 4 hours after closing.
This is a shot of the wall to wall carpeting the house came with. The carpeting lasted until 4 hours after closing.
Two from our work group of friends pulling up the offending carpeting. As the house had been largely pet free, the carpeting removal actually wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Note the pristine asbestos tile lurking underneath. We did know about the tile when we put a bid on the house, but it was still discouraging to see it revealed in all its harvest gold glory.
When the carpet pad came up, we saw a little bit of water staining, but really thought the living room would be one of the easier rooms to refinish. Boy, were we wrong!
We sanded the maple in the back bedrooms and hall as part of this project as well. However, those rooms sanded beautifully and, as such, are getting less press. Both rooms did feature an amazing array of stubborn carpet tacks. Believe me, they installed this carpet to stay.
After several failed efforts to take up the tile adhesive in the dining room, we decided to simply sand it off. We suspected, based on the era and look of the tile, that it contained asbestos. It was later that we learned that most adhesives contained asbestos as well. Don't try this at home.
The living room was our toughest room to sand. There was a wax-type finish that melted under the sander and gummed up many expensive rolls of sandpaper. We soon realized we needed to bring in heavier artillery.
This is the can of whoop ass we opened on our living room floor. It doesn't look as imposing in this picture, but this is an old-school-take-no-prisoners piece of sanding equipment. We used it with 12 grit sandpaper, which felt almost medieval. Kind of like flaying your floors with a spiked mace.
The Beast removed the finish. However, the floor looked incredibly rough after we were done. We didn't start breathing again until after a run or two with the regular sander. While we've heard the horror stories of sanders killing floors, we found our floors to be amazingly resilient.
We were amazed how these areas were blending together. They looked so different at the beginning!
