da-dun

da-dun

da-dun da-dun

da-dun da-dun da-dunda-dunda-dunda-dun.... it's sunday 11:35pm. do you know where you underwear is? (Cuz I don't!)

basically this is the state of things.
1. the floors are not done. well, kinda half done, but who cares because they are going to be redone.
2. we moved this past weekend. yes, full out MOVED! starting on saturday with Mrs. Grenier's giddy-yup at 8:30 am. and ending sunday at about 10pm with nick and dom moving in the couches. and as you see above there is a huge pile of our stuff in the living room. (again-- the floor is unfinished)
3. the slow process of putting EVERY thing into it's respectful room, and actually unpacking where possible. but we cant really unpack to set anything up too much because the floors all need to be sanded again. Buggah.... something tells me it isn't supposed to happen in this order.

OH!! shout out to all those who helped to move the third roommate. aka, Nick's wine fridge. John Grenier, and Dom Rozzi. thanks for that. Susan Rozzi and Sarah Kiely, and Browne Trading Co. for the use of their trucks. we couldn't have done it without you all!

dom

Not all rooms are created equal

After the ease of sanding the back room on the first floor (pictured above...my future office), we thought it would be smooth sailing through the living room, dining room, and into the kitchen. We learned today the hill only gets steeper.

The office posed little difficulty because the boards were wide, there was no poly layer to grind through, nor were their top nails posing a threat to the sander that needed to be pounded below the surface. The living room, however, came with all these challenges. Dom made good progress with the random orbital, though, as stellar as a tool as it is, it cannot get every stubborn spot of remaining poly. Enter the edger, or as the guys at Maine Hardware called it, The Back Breaker. After a day of using it, I can attest to the accuracy of its nickname. The only way to effectively use it is to bend over at a half squat and hover over the machine, all the while trying to tame it with every muscle in your body.

If it wasn't for the following results, I wouldn't subject my body to such treatment.


As I type, Dom is still working with the orbital on the dining room and kitchen. Both rooms have the added hurdle of heavy layers of poly, paint, and who knows what else that is taking an excessive amount of time to get through. The boards underneath have taken a beating as well, which will mean even more pain as I sweep through with the Back Breaker to do the detailing. - Nick

who said this was hard??

Not to blow my own horn or anything, but REALLY? I don't want to say that the past day has been easy, because it hasn't been. --the beach in 85 degrees with a cooler of mixers is easy!-- but maybe it's the marketing of companies that need your business that makes people believe that this home improvement stuff is beyond our meager capabilities.

last night, I had to make friends with the crawl space of the house. Nick and I are both a little afraid of the space. it's dirty, dark, there is leftover crap from past projects, not to mention the large white furry spiders that just hang there, and really the only way to get around is on your hands and knees. ugh. so, I had to go down to find a water lever so that I could shut off a water supply that once ran to the fridge that we just sold. when I found it I noticed that it was tied to a larger pipe. me being a novice shut the lever off. this morning, our toilet did not refill after the flush. huh. they tied the ice maker to the toilet. wonderful. so I had the pleasure of going back down to turn the lever back on. after two trips down I am now friends with the crawl space.

On a more exciting note; I have also become friends with a 4 head random orbital (sounds WAY more kinky than it really is) sander. I have successfully sanded the office on the first floor and i'm about 90 percent done with the living space. here are the pictures, see below!


This was where I started with the sanding today at 9am. Nick's office. I think it shows the shit brown very well on the floor. it's great.



Here you see the brown paint and the beautiful wood underneath it. I think it's cedar. It smells like cedar. but, i'm a novice. maybe it's pine? either way, it is going to be out of this world when it's finished.



This is about noon time today 9/19/09. You can see how this floor looked when I got to it. Nick had to sink all the nails down in order for me to do this. so while i was sanding his office he was hammering. we are a very effective team.



This was after the first pass on this floor. just around 2pm. the darker spots are what i thought was the floor boards, but NO it was another coat of POLY!! hmmmm why am I not surprised? this took a long time to work down to wood. i told nick that it was like trying to melt ice in the winter. LOTS of friction needed.



So here is how we rounded out our day. Elyse and Michelle came to bring us dinner (pizza, beer, and cookies) it may sound simple, but if you know these two you know that it is always homemade and delish! Yum. Elyse and Michelle also stayed and helped to do some sanding/edging and paint removal from some tiles in the dining room. AND don't think that we didn't get a few good photos of you. we will be posting them soon!

So lastly I need to mention the work that Nick has done. NIck has done some clean up on the floors and the edging for the entire first floor. (the machine for this is heavy, and you have to hold it and bend over with it, so that it doesn't stop moving). my back would not be able to do what he is doing. so I would be doing it by hand. the photos of this are coming, and we'll try to post them tomorrow. stay tuned.

Into the whee hours.

Last night, we finished scraping the entire first floor. Next on our agenda is to pound down any nails that have stuck out of the floor boards (there are many), and then sand away!

-Nick

OMG. Floors.

I think this pretty much covers the shit brown color that covers the floors and some of the walls. OH, and the kitchen tile.

progress in the kitchen.

a good view of the tile and some stripped wood around it. you and still see the shine on the brown floor here. (this was before we started tonight.

so, this is a picture of the piles of peeled paint, on the stripped floor. we have finished the kitchen/dining area. yay! and now we are on to the living room. (keep in mind this is all downstairs-- we haven't even started upstairs yet.


any thoughts out there about sanding? these floors are "top nailed" so we will have to sink all the nails a bit. then sand the shit out of the floor. I was really happy tonight though, because the floors in the living room are SO MUCH BETTER!!! I love the worn rustic look that is going to be the kitchen/dining room, but a more finished and clean looking floor will be better in the living room. okay well... time to brush up, and get to sleep. (the gym comes SO much earlier when you have to drive a half hour to get there!)

ciao!
dom

What brain cells?

We have discovered that the more toxic smelling the chemical is, the more effective it is.

-Nick

Stripping is harder than we thought

Our initiation to the world of homeowners couldn't be more exciting than our first major project, the floors! As this house was a foreclosure, we had no opportunity to talk with the previous owners about why they did some of the things they did. For instance, the wood floors and tile throughout the entire house are painted over with a dark brown. Portions have chipped off, revealing a mix of pumpkin orange and charred black/brown wood and gray tiles. It is like seeing a little tear in the wrapping of your Christmas present, except in this instance, the wrapping is super-glued to a present you're not even sure you are going to like.

Our first attempt at removing the paint involved a heat gun. We were encouraged when we found online advice recommending the use of heat guns as it would be a chemical-free way of tackling this problem. About 10 minutes into burning the paint as well as the floors underneath, we decided to scrap the idea.

After opening every door and window, we brought on the Zip-Strip. The goop works wonders, however the clean up is painful. My parents, Dom, and I spent 5 hours in various crouching and sitting positions scraping the now bubbly paint off the floors.

Fortunately, the tile was relatively easy. No chemicals were needed, just fingernails and patience, as each piece pulled up in little strips. The outcome, however, was striking. Thanks Mom!


The rest of the floors are not going to be so simple. 5 hours of 3 people scraping yielded us the majority of the kitchen and perhaps a quarter of the dining room. However the wood that was revealed inch by inch kept us motivated. It will never look perfect, but we hope it will someday look beautiful!


-Nick

A very short honeymoon period

We celebrated our first night in the house with a bottle of Rene Geoffroy Champagne, two triple cream cheeses, two old beach chairs that we had in the back of our cars and the Maria Joao Pires recordings of the Chopin Nocturnes.


It was a challenge to hold ourselves back from starting projects right away, but we refrained and enjoyed our evening. The change from Portland's sirens to Gorham's crickets was at first startling, but I don't think either of us has slept as peacefully in a long time. -Nick

sleep over.

YAY!! we dropped off our first piece of furniture today. my queen size mattress. (thanks mom for letting us use the jeep) tonight will be the first significant amount of time in the house. i couldn't stop giggling for the 10 minutes that we were in the house earlier, but lets add a bottle of bubbles, and a couple beach chairs (yes, beach chairs) in the mix and see how we do.

we ARE bringing some work material to start taking up the floor paint, and some general cleaning. for those of you who haven't seen any pictures of the house, we will be posting them soon. these will be our before photos... the STARTING photos. but first a mental picture for you. what would you get if you let your toilet just sit for about a year? (i know you know what it looks like after a couple weeks, and for those of us who lived in some type of off campus housing we probably didn't clean "the can" for months at a time... yea. gross. now imagine 12 months.) the photo will be posted soon. promise.

ciao, Dom.

A Date to Remember

We are Dom and Nick and we have just purchased our first house. A third of an acre, and the structure that stands upon it, is now our baby, our canvas, our first significant shared responsibility. Our mission is to make this a home, a reflection of our combined passions and the compromises of our differences.

We intend this online chronicling to be both a scrapbook and a forum for needed advice and encouragement. It will, inevitably, serve as entertainment, as we go into this with little experience and possibly too much ambition. We plan to shy away from nothing.

How hard can it be?