Mineral Spirits Are Not For Drinking

Tony ripped the sky blue carpet out of the bedroom a few days ago, and seeing as I didn't help him, it became my job to remove the gunk left from the pad off of our beautiful maple floors. He told me to get some mineral spirits to make the process go faster.
I wasn't sure what that was, but I went to Kmart, since it was on my way home and wandered around the floor cleaning isle looking for anything resembling mineral spirits. I hadn't been in a Kmart in a long time, and I have to say that they're about on par with Wal-Mart in my book at this point, which isn't a very complimentary statement. The entire store was void of employees, and the merchandise was extremely sparse in every department. I became irritable when I couldn't find it, as it was already 7:30 at night, so I headed over to Menards.
To get to Menards, you can no longer head west on Bluemound and turn at the intersection or pull a u-turn at any point past Brookfield Road. Instead, the only place to turn around is the extremely dangerous intersection of Bluemound and Barker Roads. So that's what I did. By the time I had scoured the flooring section and couldn't find anything, I was furious. I asked the 16 year-old girl at the customer service counter where I could find mineral spirits.
"You mean for drinking? It should be in the water filtration area."
Um, ok. Right.
I called Tony, who told me it was in the paint section. Of course. Why hadn't I thought of that?

This morning, Tony and I visited the Tile Shop, which I was surprised to discover is huge on the inside, despite the small appearance from Highway 100. We spoke with a greasy car salesman-like guy who helped us pick out some not-so-expensive dark grey tile to match with our dark bathroom theme.
From there, we visited the house. I arived a few minutes after Tony since I had two stops to make (at the coffee shop and dropping off my cabinet samples). When I got there, I found the entire kitchen ceiling had been removed and replaced- with the exception of the drywall- all in two hours. The room had been transformed: the wall which has been a thorn in our side since the first day of demolition was finally gone.
For those who aren't up to speed, an explanation. We had discovered along the way that a wall in the middle of our new kitchen was load bearing, and therefore needed to be fixed before it could be removed. Our original plan to fix the wall failed because we discovered that not only was the wall load bearing, but it supported the majority of the roof. Finally, Greg, our carpenter, found the miracle fix and went into action with his two sons, Matt and Jared.
Side note: Jared is gorgeous. He's a carpentry god. And he was climbing around in the roof above my kitchen, covered in fiberglass. I'm not really attracted to his personality, but I can appreciate a good looking guy.
Tony and I walked around the house, appreciating the work that had been done since the last time we had seen it. When we stepped outside, Tony pointed out an area of wood that needed to be painted on the roof since the roofers had removed some siding when they replaced the roof. I volunteered to climb up on the roof and paint it, despite my fear of heights. The slant didn't look so bad, and I would be able to lie down and paint in leisure, away from the fiberglass that was covering most of the floor in my house.
Tony took two pictures of me on the roof, but I don't have them yet. It was fun, but I did manage to get paint in my hair and all over my pants.
When I got down, Tony and I took a second look at the doorway to the basement, and with encouragement from our carpentry trio, decided to open the doorway by removing the south wall. The result made the dining room appear larger, and far more modern. It looks great!
The floor in the master bedroom was my second chore of the day. I got to work scrubbing black goo off the floor with the Mineral Spirits, but quickly discovered that the fumes made me dizzy, despite the air moving through the room. At Tony's insistence, I wore the resiprator, which took away the smell. About 20 minutes into my efforts, Tony's grandpa wandered in to inspect my progress. He decided he could find a better way to remove the goo and shuffled back out, muttering to himself. I returned to my job, and after a few minutes, figured he had been distracted and forgot all about him. When he did return, he had with him steel wool, two wire brushes and a putty knife. He began using the wire brushes on my beautiful wood floor, which made me cringe in horror. He was scraping the wood! I remained silent, however, because of the unspoken rules within Tony's family, one of which being that it's not a good idea for Lynn to tell Tony's grandpa to do anything. It's a respect thing. Three hours later, we still didn't have even half of the floor clean, and I was trying my hardest to ignore the scratches in the floor, rationalizing that it would be refinished and the scratches probably weren't deep enough to make a difference.
When I got tired of staring at the floor, I went to help Tony clean up by vaccuming up the remaning fiberglass. I'm pretty sure I inhaled some in the process, but I feel ok right now.
At this point, we're over budget by about $8k, but I'm sure that number will continue to increase. Every decision we make we make based on price.
If that weren't stressful enough, I poured apple juice all over my computer the other day, and shorted it out. A surge ruined my hard drive, rendering it useless. If I want to get the data back, it will cost me about $2,400. I'm debating if it's worth it.
I'm also trying to get a second job. I've got my heart set on Starbucks, although I think it might be a good idea to apply to Target. We're going to need the money.

It's Raining Styrofoam

My intention with this blog was to chronicle the demolition of our house as it happened. Unfortunately, I underestimated how much time would go into said demolition, and how unwilling I would be to stay wake long enough to write about it when I got home. That's why now that we're no longer working every evening, I am taking the time to reflect on what has happened so far and attempt to catch up to the present.
At one point, we decided the mock wood Styrofoam beams running across the ceiling needed to go, and without further ado, Tony raised the sledgehammer over his head and knocked free the first beam, which fell to the floor, sending black pieces of dust everywhere, and leaving two nasty streaks of black on the ceiling where the beam had been glued.
Several days later, it became my job to attempt to remove the glue remnants from the ceiling by climbing up the world's ricketiest ladder and scraping above my head with a tool that did nothing. Tony was sure that Goo Gone would remove the glue, so I headed to the hardware store and bought some, along with a 2" paint scraper, which looked menacing.
I returned and found that the Goo Gone did indeed remove the glue, but not before making a tar-y, sticky mess, which oozed all over the ceiling and dropped onto one of my favorite t-shirts.
Don't ask me why I was wearing that shirt for demolition. It made sense when I got dressed that morning.
So I abandoned the Goo Gone mess, and slowly worked at scraping the glue from the ceiling, which showered seemingly millions of pounds of dust into my face, nose, hair and eyes. Since I'm a bit squirmish about "being uncomfortable", I refused to wear a face mask, because they make me sweat. As for goggles, I can't see as clearly, so I threw those on the floor. The result was the black dust got in my nose (and presumably my lungs-- not so great, since it's probably toxic) and in my eyes, under my contacts. The ladder didn't help either-- I had to balance myself properly and hold one hand on the ceiling, which took away from the strength I needed to scrape. Besides, my foot still hurt from injuring it while busting up tile and I quickly became cranky.
Tony was not so accepting of my cranky behavior, and sent me back the next day to finish my job. Tony doesn't complain. Let me rephrase that. Tony doesn't complain so much as he likes to be honored for doing a good job. He will comment that something was hard work, but only because he likes to know that he's doing a good job. He'll probably read this and take offense, but really, I'm not being insulting.
Back to the point. Even though I whined about my job, he did stop over halfway through the day and helped me scrape the rest of the crap from the ceiling, which was nice.
When I got home, I had black scratchy dust in my bra, my bellybutton, my ears, and all sorts of places. It took me three days to get the black stuff out of my hair. I never want to do that again.

Empty Rooms With Promise

The kitchen floor was made from asbestos tile, which was common at the time that this house was built. When I heard that we would be removing such a large area of dangerous material, I was afraid for both myself and Tony. I had heard of asbestos poisoning, and I didn't want either of us to die before we could enjoy our home. However, due to budget constraints, we decided to remove it anyway.
Tony and I got to work, wearing masks and goggles, picking at the edges of the tile with putty knives and prying up small sections of easily breakable tile. After a half hour, our efforts had yielded maybe a two foot square of space of broken tile. Tony was getting exasperated, and decided to use an outdoor ice shovel to break up the tile and scrape it from the floor. It didn't work very well, so he took it downstairs and sharpened it. That worked a bit better, but still it seemed we were getting nowhere.
Since there was only one tool, he sent me to search the yellow pages until I found a gas station that sold dry ice. He had read that by freezing the tile, it would cause the glue underneath to give far easier, making it easier to scrape away the tile. I drove a half hour each way to the gas station, which was just south of Miller Park, and picked up forty dollars worth of dry ice. I drove back to the house, armed with ice and Gatorade, for which Tony was grateful.
Once the ice was placed on the tile, it became far easier to scrape from the floor. The problem was that as Tony chipped away at the tile, it shattered, and the ice went flying with it, in every direction. I followed chunks of ice around the kitchen and pushed them back toward Tony, who would then chip up more tile, and I would chase after it again. It sounds like more fun than it was.
It was a warm day, and the ice was melting fast. We couldn't turn on the air conditioning, because the tile would fall into the vents-- which were blocked off-- so poor Tony worked non stop, sweat pouring over his face and fogging up his glasses.
Before long, he sent me back to the gas station for more dry ice. This time I bought sixty dollars worth, and lugged it back home with me. By the time I got home, Tony had presumably lost it, and had wreaked havoc on the kitchen tile. Three quarters of the tile was gone, and he stood, panting, covered in sweat, wielding his weapon and looking like a madman. I mostly stayed out of his way while he chipped away at the rest of the tile, busying myself with other tasks.
When he finished and was fed, he was proud of the work accomplished for the day, and was optimistic about the floor we still had to chip off in the dining room. This tile was peeling up at the corners, and looked to be far thinner than the previous tile. We both went home that day, knowing we had work ahead of us, but anticipating that it would be a walk in the park compared to what we had done in the kitchen.
We were wrong.
The dining room took two days and was a horrible mess. The tar used underneath the tiles was still sticky, and would cause any broken tile to readhere to it almost immediately. In addition, the thinner material made it more difficult to use the tool to get underneath the tile. Some of the ice had melted from the day before, but what was left wasn't doing us any good.
Tony's grandpa stopped over halfway through the day and watched us. He didn't have anything to contribute, so he left. He returned about an hour later, with a tool especially designed for tile removal. Tony tried using it, while I used the old scraper. It worked much easier, but also gouged the floor below, which we were attempting to salvage, which only made Tony more and more angry. He began swearing to himself, then commenting to me how useless the tool was, and becoming more and more upset. In addition, the tile and gunk got caught in it and bent the blade. After several attempts to clean the blade, the screws holding it were stripped, so in a fit of rage, Tony took it outside and smashed it to pieces.
"Look what I did," he said. I was busy gathering tile to take outside, so I didn't look up immediately. "Look Lynn," he sounded a bit like a child, eager to show me his new discovery. I looked up at him where he stood near the door, a hint of a smile on his lips and danger in his eyes, carying the smashed tool.
"That's nice." I said, going back to the tile.
I can't remember if it was before or after this incident that I told him he scared me when he acted like that. My words seemed to have a calming effect, but I can't be sure if he was only doing that to pacify me, or because he realized that he probably shouldn't be scaring his girlfriend over a malfunctioning tool.
It took us two days to remove the dining room floor.
I removed the tile in the small bathroom (Tony refers to it as the "powder room") by myself, using a sledgehammer and a small putty knife. I had started on it in the morning before Tony arived, and I had hoped to have it done by the time he got there, since the area was really only about 4x5 feet. Instead, it took me all day. The tile was thick, and although it broke apart when smashed with the sledgehammer, I had to take care not to ruin the subfloor. There was also very little room to turn around in that area, so I was left squatting in odd positions, chipping away at dusty tile, sweat pouring down my face. When I finally finished, however, I was extremely proud of myself. I've pointed out that I removed that tile to everyone who has set foot in the door.

Scrub Scrub Scrub Scrub Scrub

Three days of staring at dull, glue covered, poorly painted gold walls can have an effect on one's psychological well-being. Especially when the ultimate goal is to remove 30 year-old gunky white glue covering the dull gold paint, which was obviously hastily applied. To remove said glue, I probably went through about 30 gallons of water, hauling three buckets at a time to and from the basement, then delicately scrubbing at the glue until it turned into a milky white paste, and sponged it off. With three buckets of water, I could clean a two foot wide area from ceiling to floor, however, by the time I got halfway down the wall, the water was saturated with glue, making it more difficult to sponge off the glue, and making my efforts seem more like I was chasing goop around the wall.
As I scrubbed at the glue, it sprayed all over my face and hair. Even now, my arm hair is matted and crusty, and my face is speckled. But today, I conquered the glue. I finished wiping every last square inch of glue off the walls, and I am glad to say that I feel a sense of self-satisfaction at having done so without help.
While I sponged and cursed my marigold prison, Tony spent his time in the basement removing the ceiling and enduring a shower of mouse turds without complaint. It seems the mice no longer inhabit our home, but at one time had been making the space between the basement and first floor into a mice city of sorts. We are lucky they didn't do much more damage than pissing and defecating everywhere-- they could have chewed through live wires... although then the little bastards would have gotten what they deserved. Although Tony was skeptical about the aesthetics of the basement once the ceiling was removed, I am glad to have the feces and mold out of the house for good.
Tony finished removing the ceiling yesterday evening, which was in record time, since he had to remove a number of wooden boards, and came in contact with live wires which were not capped off at the ends. I was amazed at how quickly he moved through the whole process, and it was quite amusing to come downstairs and watch him in his industrial looking respirator and goggles, covered in sweat. Not once did he curse the mouse droppings or complain that his job was disgusting. I can't say I would have completed the task with such grace.
This morning when I arrived with two cases of beer, ham and rolls, and some candy, Tony and his barber, Nick, had removed most of the kitchen cabinets. Nick wanted to use them to put in his garage for storage. His wife was there too, holding her (huge- not fat, just rather large) one year-old son. Once Nick and his family left, Tony began pounding through walls. I got a few hits in too, and I must say the experience was exhilarating.
I'll spare you the details of the rest of the demolition, except to say that I am proud of Tony and I and our progress-- we got an incredible amount of work done. It was amazing. We did run into a problem, however. One of our walls may be a load-bearing wall. We're not sure, and there's no sense in speculating. Tony will find out tomorrow, so I'll be sure to update, since that may have a significant effect on our plans.
For tonight, I need to go to bed early. We're back at it again bright and early tomorrow.