Caught my husband with a stripper!

You heard me correctly.  I got a text from my husband this afternoon "I rented a stripper for the day - hope you don't mind" My reply.  "Is she prettier than me?"  Ha - we were talking - of course - about the carpet and tile stripper that we rented from True Value this afternoon to finally take up the awful dining room carpet.  Really people?  Carpet in the dining room?  Needless to say - it was a welcome change to come home for lunch to find this happening in my dining room.

I didn't really even realize how awful the carpet was until it was laying in my driveway.  The underside was filthy.  But the dining room smells a LOT (understatement) better now with the last of the carpet and fabric left behind.

The depths of idiocy of the previous homeowners was once again evident once everything was done.  First, the carpet was laid on a solid glue mat which stretched the entire length of the 16x16 room.  Talk about overkill.  This is why the stripper came in handy - to pull up glue and carpet shreds so they could take it out in pieces. Next, we discovered that the carpet had not been applied to the subflooring directly, but to the same rubberized linoleum that they have in the laundry room.  Really?  Yes really.  Flooring on top of flooring.  Fabulous. 

When I left, Chad and James were tugging and pulling and stripping (yeah I know how that sounds) but when I got home, I now have...

A blank canvas!  On the way home from my appointments in Ames I stopped (again) at Lowe's and picked up a roll of 15 pound builders felt to help flatten out the bumps and bruises that were underneath the crazy carpeting so now I just need to find time to lay the felt then put my vinyl plank flooring on over the top. 

I can hardly believe that we have only been in this house for 10 days and already the house looks completely different than the one we turned the key on last Friday.  The wall color in this room turned out a little bit more on the Olive side than the Sage side but I still really like it.  It looks great with the dark wood furniture and with the  "gunstock oak" colored flooring I'm finally going to have a nice, elegant dining room! I'm truly excited about the prospect.  Excited enough to be on my hands and knees laying flooring for the next two days.  (well Thursday and Friday at least).

Since its been a couple of days without time and Internet access to update progress: some of the other projects I have taken on to varying degrees of success was to take down this hideous, monstrous, hanging light fixture.  We bought a multidirectional ceiling mounted light to put up in its place but first I have to figure out which breaker switch turns off the power off to that fixture so as not to create a Krispy Krissy delicacy out of myself.  My dad was excited to see it gone too - he bumps his head on it every time he walks into that hallway.

I also changed out the doorknobs on the front and back of the garage and bought a new deadbolt for the front door.  So everything is now rekeyed so we don't have to worry about who around town might have keys from the previous tenants. And the slow unpacking process is ongoing one at a time but I did get a chance on Sunday to organize the boxes into categories such as "Clothes Jackson has outgrown but will fit Joey next week"; "Stuff my mother has moved from her garage into mine for storage"; "Krissy is addicted to Christmas clearance at Target" and "Couponing stash and other assorted collections."

Once enough boxes are unpacked to allow us to park both vehicles in the garage, the only minor projects left are going to be taking down the wallpaper border in the kitchen and painting the walls the same color as the dining room and picking a wall color for the foyer and a rug to match.

Major projects include: Getting a tree cut down in the back yard, installing central air, mold remediation in the basement (well, actually, redoing the entire basement), and getting the attic cleaned out and attic blanket installed so its ready for refinishing.  All of that can be put on hold though (although my husband and kids would claim that the a/c needs to go in more than immediately).  I'm pretty proud that we have been able to do so much in just a week and a half and on a fairly limited budget.  At last count we have only spent about $1500 and a LOT of sweat and time every single drop has been worth it though. More updates when the flooring goes in!