The First Floor Shuffle

The goal: to free up the living room, so we can tackle the floor demo over the coming days. We’re aiming to clear up the floor much like we did in the dining room, taking things down to the substrate.
The goal: to free up the living room, so we can tackle the floor demo over the coming days. We’re aiming to clear up the floor much like we did in the dining room, taking things down to the substrate.
Of course, after recently watching Jurassic Park on Netflix… I couldn’t help but think of that classic quotation from Jeff Goldblum’s character.
Removing the tile is one thing, but the next step involves cleaning each piece so they can be put back in place. It’s a lot of physical work to clean each one, but they really do shine afterwards.
Liz has been powering through getting all the fireplace hearthstone/tiles cleared and demo-ed, in preparation for the upcoming floor work we have scheduled.
Liz was a total whirlwind today. After work, she suited up and began work in the dining room. I was still finishing up on my computer, but could hear the *clang* of a chisel and hammer, over and over again.
Liz, working on the other side of the interior door. She’s using a newer product that I think is made of… soy? It’s interestingly organic, and still strips off paint/varnish pretty well.
Quick photo documenting the work Liz is doing, restoring the (very large) interior door from the first floor. This guy is a sibling to our front door, but contains a large pane of glass.
After our visit from the fireplace guy yesterday (which involved opening up and investigating the long-dormant living room chimney), Liz spotted this guy on the floor post-cleanup.
Interesting detail: the imprint on the back says “United States Encaustic Tile Company, Indianapolis, Indiana.”
With our recent work on the dining room floor, we’ve decided to move Liz’s office/desk over to the front of the house (the living room).
All told, we started a bit before noon and finshed up closer to 7:30 PM I want to say. A really, really long day. I think for the other rooms, we may want to split this work up over multiple days, just so we don’t have to marathon it again.
Liz, continuing to put in the time, working in the basement and prepping yet another transom.
Liz and I spent a lot of the day talking about the house, trying to plan out what we want to get done this year. In a lot of ways, working from home makes things both easier and more difficult, at the same time.
Liz was excited to shift over from working on doors to windows, and started in on a transom from one of the upstairs doors.
As we were sitting in the driveway, looking at our lawn… I pulled up some old photos of what the backyard used to look like, when we moved in. It’s such a stark difference, and hard to believe how rough it looked, before now.