Tuesday, June 15

dear previous homeowners,

I understand the desire to leave your mark on your home, to customize your home, even the longing for home improvements. Really, I do. However, I have to ask: Why did you feel compelled to half-ass everything you did to what is now our lovely abode?

I can even understand the poor paint job. Sometimes a roller can be difficult to control. Trust me, it’s taken two coats and we still have some issues with our new paint in the kitchen. And painters tape can be a pain. Is that why you left some on the shower in the bathroom? Are you scared of electrocution? I know we were a little fearful when replacing a light fixture, but hesitating to remove the switch covers when you paint? No risk there. But in your eyes, better to be safe than sorry.  Is that why you chose to paint over the switch covers? For these nerdy birds, we just turned off the power when we were anxious about shocking results.

It’s okay. Don't worry about the switch covers, or the plugs..we’re going to replace those anyway. My bone to pick with you is not about your poor painting habits though. It’s about something much more substantial.

Three layers more substantial.

Why in the world did you think it was a good idea to put down three layers of flooring in the kitchen?

Really?  Seriously?  And  did you have to use single square self-stick tiles? 

I'm sorry. Enough of me berating you, previous owners. If it wasn’t for you—we wouldn’t have this lovely house to buy and love.

We also wouldn’t have had three layers of flooring to demo this weekend.

But back to our working weekend...we picked up one of these bad boys a few weeks ago from Home Depot and it was worth every bit of the $5 price tag:

Meet the biggest and baddest linoleum knife I've ever seen.

A good chunk of our Saturday consisted of the Man using his insane upper body strength to cut through three layers of linoleum and vinyl flooring, me getting in his way trying to pull up the stinky floor, and us hauling the stack of sticky pieces away to the dumpster in the back of Lola, my Civic.
 
The pile of rejects grows.

In a few short hours (and lots of sweat, cursing, and reaffirmations of love) we went from this:
to this:
and of course we couldn't have done it without the encouragement and assistance of our ever present foreman perched high above us:
Yes, this was mid-meow.

Our next task was to figure out how and what would get up the adhesive that remained (and replenish the empty cat food dish).

3 comments:

Danielle and Clint said...

O my goodness, that last picture is so funny! I feel your pain though. We have about 3 layers as well of bad flooring in our kitchen that we will need to lift one day. Ugh...I don't even want to think about it! But the hard work is worth it!

Eva said...

Danielle,
It is so worth the work! Even when we just had the bare cement slab I preffered it to the old flooring. :) My recommendation-- get a good floor scraper and some adhesive removing solvent and give it a good soak. It will stink up your house, but make pulling up the old stuff so much easier. Thanks for reading!

Ashley said...

hehe kitty :)