(unfinished) projects

It's been awhile. I'm still sick and pregnant; one more month to go. Boy #3 is scheduled for delivery on February 1st. I'm ready to get back to my real life. A real life of cleaning, cooking, and home remodel.

We have a bunch of unfinished projects going on and have vowed to not start anymore until all the started ones are actually completed. Normally I help with all the demo and such, but right now when I say we, I mean I lay on the couch and kind of take care of the kids while J does all the work.

A long time ago we started painting our house. But then it got really hot out and wasn't finished. And then it just got really cold and wasn't finished. And there have been some nice days in between, but it still hasn't been finished. 

We've been trying to grow grass outside but the birds have been eating all the seed no matter what we do to get rid of them. So no grass but we did get the sprinklers working.

A few months ago we got so sick of our nasty living room carpet we just had to get rid of it. Now. So we pulled it up and that was a bigger job than anticipated. This house is on a concrete slab as opposed to a wood sub-floor like our last. It makes a difference. The padding was glued to the concrete and wasn't easy scraping up and the tackstrips were nailed in, leaving lots of holes. Here's what we found under the carpet padding.

That's dirt people. Straight up nasty dirt under our carpet that we were breathing in day and night. I'm so glad it's gone but I'm sure the bedrooms are just as bad and we can't do everything at once so I try not to think about it. We're going to attempt to stain the concrete and see how it turns out. To do that we also have to take up all the tile in the adjoining dining room, kitchen, spare bath, and hallway. I'm excited because I hate tile. This picture shows the before and after of my grout cleaning from before we moved in:

Can you see the difference? The after is better but still not great. Years and years of dirt and germs imbedded into the tiny porous holes of grout and ceramic tile. It's in there and it's gross. Here's what you find under tile that has been applied on concrete:

That's leftover tile mortar. You can't scrape it up yourself. It just doesn't come off and it's not easy on your feet. We'll be renting a concrete grinder to get that all up before we can stain. 

So the last obstacle of our flooring business is the kids/spare bathroom. We want that bathroom floor to also be finished concrete. So the tile in the bathroom will come up but the toilet and vanity must come out before hand. The toilet has to come out because it sits on top of the tile. The vanity must come out because we'll be replacing it with a pedestal sink and need to finish all the floor that will show. And as long as we're working on the bathroom we'll also go ahead and take out the cheap tub and cheap plastic shower surround (I wish I had a picture but I'm too lazy right now) as we want to replace it with stone and slate. It never ends, really.

In case you were wondering, we knew we would be doing all this work when we bought this house. It's all stuff we did to our last house and know how to do. No surprises here.

I don't make new year's resolutions, but maybe finishing all these projects and moving on to the kitchen count.