Budgets and ONE WEEK of Renovations

Charlie in his work clothes.

He's been in the house about

10 minutes total so far because

it's just too dangerous, dusty

and downright scary for me

to have him there!

I don't know how people get budgets for renovations. Everytime we call an electrician, flooring guy, plumber, or even a locksmith, they need to come out, look at everything, know everything, etc. There is no "ballpark figures". How much is upgrading the service panel? Well, that depends. Your wiring to the garage isn't to code, so you have to bury that. Okay, let's bury it. Well, then, it will be thousands. Why? Well, I can't give an exact figure. Etc, etc.

Insane!

So things seem to be moving slowly. The floors, of course, took up the entire last week. Yep, it's been ONE WEEK of renovations. I think people expect a lot of us in one week. Friends keep asking how the "move is going". To me, that's like asking "how is the potty training going?" to a parent of a 6 month old. WTF people?

In one week:

• Pulled up all vinyl, lino which was paper or board-backed.
• Pulled up adhesive-backed lino on the stairs and spent approx.  8 hours scraping every little bit of that tar adhesive off.

The stairs still look like shit. And you can see light through the space between the riser and tread.




This is a pretty photo of the place, highlighting
 the back-breaking edger.

• Prepped all floors (thanks dad) by nail punching all nails 1/8" below surface of floor.
• Removed all base trim that is likely going to be replaced as it's just quarter round (dad)
• Demo'ed all plaster/lath from kitchen ceiling (Justin) and walls (Carter, Justin)
• Removed all stubborn cabinetry (Justin, Carter)
• Cleaned the hellamess this left (me, Justin)
• Moved all dumpster contents to new dumpster (Carter, Justin) as there was a problem with the stupid Bin Bags we bought where they wouldn't pick them up from the alley even though it says they do on the packaging (apparently just not in Canada).
•  Drum sanded all floors in 2 days (Justin).
• Edged all floors in 2 days (Justin for the hardest, coarsest grit, and father-in-law for the rest).

Before and After of the 2nd floor hallway. Okay, needless to say, it doesn't look fantastic in the after does it? Can you even tell which is after? Sigh, the one on the right people. Oh dear.

Still left is to sand all corners with a Dremel hand tool that I bought on the weekend for this purpose.

I started peeling off old paint on the railing and entryway trim. It comes off like plastic, as though I am holding balloon latex in my hands. It's actually really addictive and I found myself spending an hour doing it last night saying mentally "I should really go home now, really. Just one more little strip first."



Started filling cracks, holes with putty (Dad, me) to realize it was the wrong filler

Ordered filler (coming tomorrow) for the insane spaces between floor boards



The wrong damn filler. This is carpenter's putty. Whoops.

• Weeding (mom, me)

Before and After weeding. I'm too depressed to tell you which is which since they look EXACTLY the same and yet my kid ended up with a zillion mosquito bites as a result of my extensive weeding with him for hours! BaGar!