domestic terror

About a month and a half ago, on the run-up to SXSW, I was considering my bathroom. I got my master bathroom plumbed and functional in time for SXSW the previous year and then, aside from getting the floors redone, basically nothing happened with the house in the intervening twelve months. I patched some drywall in that bathroom, and had electricians install lights and the guys who built the master closet hang some medicine cabinets. But that’s all. So for the past couple months, I’ve been increasingly aware of my 80/20 problem.

A lot of really big stuff happened in the first few months I owned this place, and then progress kind of trickled off. For months now, since the floors, I’ve been describing it as mostly mostly done, meaning that most of the rooms are almost complete. They need trim, they need caulk, they need paint. They need new light fixtures and new hundred-year-old doors installed. But they have walls and floors. They have functioning closets. The have plumbing, they have carpet, they have paint. I kept thinking I would find the time to deal with those miscellaneous outstanding items.

I began a new job a month ago, and it’s one where I work exclusively from home. I mean, I can go to a coffeeshop if I want to, of course, but I do not go into an office during a normal week. This is amazing. It’s something I’ve wanted forever. But it’s also something I assumed would happen around the time I got my home office finished and furnished. My dad is giving me the giant, solid desk that belonged to my grandfather as part of the large shipment of furniture that’s been waiting on me getting through with remodeling to be sent down here. I realized I wanted that desk now, I didn’t want to wait. I realized that being able to point to a piece of crown moulding and say I installed it was less important to me than that the moulding be installed and fucking done. That my house become livable. That I stop sitting on the floor. That I have the option of eating a meal at an honest-to-god table. That I unpack my possessions. That I finish the goddamned outstanding 20% of the work that’s taken me 80% of the time to get around to.

So I hired a general contractor and gave him my laundry list. Subcontractors will take care of all these little jobs, I’ll be left with some things, but mostly caulking and painting. Not things I need to put a lot of planning into, just annoying, mundane tasks. And it won’t feel as satisfying to say, “I caulked that window!” as it feels being able to say, “I framed that closet!” but fuck it. I’ve carried around the weight of almost-done plenty long enough and I’m ready to move on.

Amazingly enough, after getting the floors redone, I continued making progress. Crazy, right? I know. It’s like I wake up in the morning and don’t even recognize myself. I was able to find someone to turn the hot water back on, though it required some sacrifices on my part. Then I got carpet put down in the living room which is actually amazing even though it’s just simple office carpet (I hate that deep pile shit). And last week I had a guy come in and put casings on the windows. There are pictures of those, but I can’t get them right now because I’m in too much pain. With both the casings and the carpet, the living room is much prettier now.

The pain is due to today’s activity: framing a closet. I bought the 2x4s to do this framing job about two years ago. I was thinking it was one, but no, I have proof:

I made a festive “tree” out of them when I got them. That may be how they ended up so twisted and warped. All the 2x4s you see there that weren’t used to frame the laundry room wall are now a closet in the second bedroom. Or, well, a closetish structure. Lacking sheetrock or a rod to hang things on, I guess it doesn’t really count. Also there was some difficulty getting the top plates of the walls nailed into the ceiling, so the damn thing may explode sometime during the night. But if I get my hands on some wood screws it should be ok. Also the hole for the door is too small and now the door has to be cut down to fit cause no effing way were we (my ex-husband came over and gave me a hand) tearing that damned wall apart then reassembling it.

It’s been a while since I did any serious work on the house, actually creating or building anything. It felt good. I mean, I’m in crippling pain right now, but, you know, otherwise. There are some problems with the window casings I had done, and now I’m beginning to feel that familiar insane rush telling me I ought to just rent a pneumatic nailer and do the rest of the trim myself. Surely this is foolhardy, but I forgot how it is to start the day with a blank canvas and finish it with something built.

Ok. The floors are done. Finally.

Ultimately, I never did the living room. Once I had the northwest corner mostly scraped, it became clear exactly how rotten the wood was. Trying to sand the rotted part off would probably not have left me much floor. And, as I’ve now realized, rotten wood doesn’t look that great when stained.

The bedrooms, dining room, and entryway have been sanded, patched, and stained, however. The wood that was good looks amazing. When they sanded the remaining adhesive off, it was incredible to see the pine underneath perfectly preserved, looking like it had been purchased and installed the day before.

There are a lot of flaws. Not charming flaws like knots or dark patches – the things that make this wood most definitely not stain grade – but rot and mismatched colors (apparently the wood from the master bathroom was something different, because it was used for the patching and is noticeably darker). But fuck it. The wood is insanely straight. It’ll probably hold up the way it has for over a hundred years. Baseboards will cover some of the worse spots, and I can strategically position furniture over the rest. And at some point I may just stain it darker, even though it won’t take the stain evenly. Thing is, it’s done. After over two years. It’s a big deal.

That’s the good news. The sealant on the floor is polyurethane based, which is a fancy term for “highly flammable”. Therefore, the flooring guys had to turn off the gas before sealing the wood, since they couldn’t have all the pilot lights from the gas appliances going. They’re not allowed to turn the gas back on, though. So I called the gas company to do that.. They were happy to turn the gas back on for me, but they decided that my water heater – the water heater which has been in the same fucking position since before I owned the house and has been re-lit by this exact same gas company about four times – is out of code. There’s a tag on it now, indicating that it’s not allowed to be turned on until I fix the previously nonexistent code violations. Short version? I have no fucking hot water at my house unless I cook it myself.

I’m trying to decide how to proceed. I’m hoping to find a skinnier water heater to put in the same place, and then build a closet around it, which should satisfy the code. It may need an additional vent as well, but then that’s it. I’d like a tankless, just because it would free up that space, but I think the water is too hard to make it a good option. I need to figure out how quickly I can get a heater installed and all the rest.

So now I have floors, and my life can go on. But I can’t go home yet.

This weekend, I finally finished removing the linoleum from the dining room floor, meaning I now have scraped the floors in half the rooms that need it. Tomorrow I’m going to move everything from the living room into the dining room and start working there. I have what is probably a ridiculous dream that I’ll have the floors done in time for SXSW and perhaps can even have guests. Here’s to hoping.

Because when I looked I couldn’t find any truly useful information on how to remove this old linoleum from a wood floor, I thought I’d take the time to actually document how I’ve been doing it. Like, for science.

The first and most obvious part of this process was removing the layers of flooring that covered the linoleum and determining that there was hardwood beneath it and that I was the sort of insane person who’d want to try and refinish it. This operation was successful on all counts and actually went pretty quickly once I got all the shit (read: furniture) off the floors and resigned myself to my own lack of marbles. Fortunately there was never much furniture to begin, and even fewer marbles.

To begin working in a room, I’ve found it’s easiest if you can find an edge of the linoleum. If there’s no edge you can score the linoleum and try to kind of dig into it with the floor scraper, but that’s a pain in the ass. It’s preferable if you can have a doorway that leads into the room, the other side of which does not have linoleum. In the bedroom I had to work from an interior corner, which was zero fun, since I was scraping toward myself. Another option I had but YMMV is to find the linoleum seam where two sections were joined and begin there.

The primary tool I’ve been using in this operation is my FUCKING AWESOME Fein saw. I have a scraping blade attachment that, while it’s pretty small, does a pretty good job of exactly what you’d think based on the name. It took a little figuring out, but now I would rate my technique with this machine as rock-fucking-solid. Because the edges of the linoleum tend to slope down from the linoleum to the floor itself at an angle, I’ve had to angle it slightly downward to get it under the lip of the linoleum. Sometimes this means digging into the floor a little, especially if the angle is awkward (see that thing about starting in the corners). But a little nick here and there is worth it if it means you get the blade fully under the adhesive, instead of embedding it in the adhesive.

I push the blade under in an arc, down then level, but don’t try to push in too far. Push in too far and the linoleum will tear, which just makes another edge I have to go back and loosen with the Fein saw. That’s the point of the Fein saw – not to remove, but to loosen, creating a nice lip of detached linoleum at all the exposed edges.

After I go around with the saw and loosen all the edges, I turn it off (for bonus safety points you can unplug it, but I already have lots of safety points saved up from taking two months off from this, so I don’t) and begin using a hand-held floor scraper. Protip, y’all: the scraper works best when I don’t do a lot of scraping with it. Instead I get it under the lip and then pop it gently upward, sort of using it like a wide, flat crowbar (which, incidentally, is what I was using early on in this process). I try to loosen the linoleum further from underneath as much as I can. Eventually the handle won’t allow me to go any further under, or I’ll come up against a spot where there’s more glue, and the linoleum will tear. But I can sometimes get some pretty big-ass strips removed this way.

As I pull away the torn-off linoleum, I check the edges it leaves behind. Sometimes they weren’t attached very well, or were loosened by using the scraper right next to them, and I can continue going with the scraper in that spot. Usually not, so then I go around the new edges again with the Fein saw. And repeat. Eventually the linoleum all comes off and the floor looks like shit but hopefully some professionals will sort that out.

I’ve found that this whole process hurts like hell if you do it for two long and makes your neck feel like it’s about to go all Henry Rollins. I’ve been taking my dad’s recommendation, which is to immerse my hands in cold water after each session to dull the pain that comes from holding and pushing a quickly vibrating saw for a couple hours. This works ok. I also got some padded gloves, which dampens some of the vibration. And, working on the floor, of course I’m using kneepads. Initially I was using cheap-ass foam ones, but someone whose job it once was at some point to remove all the nails and screws from the floors didn’t actually do that, so I switched to sturdier ones and now can’t feel a fucking thing through them. And finally, of course, I’m wearing a big scary insect-looking respirator mask because who the hell knows what nastiness I’m stirring up. Of course I still continue to live in the house with the dust of the aforementioned nastiness, but at least I’m not down on my hands and knees breathing heavily right next to it.

So yeah. Two more to go and then I can call the professional flooring company and see if they want to come back, assuming we even still use telephones that far in the future.

Last week my bathtub arrived. Getting it inside was actually much easier than I thought it would be (this is a 335lb. item) thanks to the help of Nait, John, and Alex. It took maybe half an hour, and probably would have been even faster if I hadn’t freaked out about it so much. The thing kind of terrified me. I was genuinely concerned we’d get it inside just to have it crash through the floor. Thankfully, so far it has not. I haven’t filled it up with water and put a person in it, though, so I’m still not 100% convinced the floor will hold it. But I have high hopes.

Yesterday and today I had plumbers over roughing in the drains and water lines for the tub, as well as the sinks and the toilet. These are mostly done now, pending an inspection. I found out during this process that I have some open permit issues to deal with, one of which requires moving the gas meter up to the house. The gas company wants me to pay for this myself, which seems like bullshit as it’s their fucking gas meter. We’ll see how much it costs, I guess. They’re coming to give me an estimate on Tuesday.

Now that I’ve got the plumbing roughed in it’s time to start tiling, which I’m actually happy about. I like tiling. I tiled the laundry room and it doesn’t look like complete shit. This is going to be harder though, as the tiles are smaller and there’s a lot more surface area. I think it would be a really fun idea to make it even more complicated by putting radiant heat under the floor. The master bathroom isn’t going to have a real stand-up shower so to get clean quick I’ll have to sit in the tub and use the hand shower. I could see that being real unpleasant in winter without some kind of heat source in addition to the furnace, which only comes on when it wants to. I don’t even know if it’s ok to put the radiant heat under the tub, though. I think if I put liquid vinyl over it, it should be fine, but my grasp of electrical engineering is not exactly expert-level. But really, people put radiant heat in bathrooms all the time and they must get stuff wet on occasion.

I’m looking at tiling myself not just because I’m cheap, but in order to get the work done sooner. I really like the tile guy who did my other bathroom, but that dude is busy. I could be waiting a month for him to be available, and I know this is something I’m capable of if I take my time and do it correctly. Or I’m capable of fucking it up at a vastly discounted rate, at least.

I get magical feelings when I think about this bathroom. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long-ass time and I’ve planned it and re-planned it. I’ve been acquiring fixtures for it almost as long as I’ve lived here. Now that it’s seriously underway, I’m excited. It almost makes it worth it to have been so stressed out about the plumbers and their initial estimate that we’d have to tear down the whole room and start over to get the plumbing in. When I bought this house it was moldy, dirty, and outdated. And I didn’t even know the worst of it. All the drains in there had “auto-vents,” which means that a pipe came up from the drain under the house and let the sewer gas out there, where it remained. The handle of the shower faucet wasn’t anchored and could no longer be turned off all the way, so it dripped constantly. The toilet ran and the floor around it was noticeably mushy. Whatever I end up with has got to be an improvement over what it was.

I’m hoping, though, I can go beyond good enough and make the master bathroom a place where I genuinely want to hang out. I’ve been looking at other people’s photos for inspiration. I like this rundown of vintage baths, and this photoset of a remodel on flickr (how did they make that medicine cabinet?? arrrgh i need to know). I need to figure out the lighting, and of course once I do that I’ll still have shelving and trim to deal with. But I feel like this bathroom is getting off on the right foot and even my screw-ups haven’t actually set it back yet. It may be too much to hope for awesomeness, but that’s where I’m setting my sights.

A year ago tonight I was taking busted IKEA furniture and stacks of old magazines down to the dumpsters at the apartment complex where I used to live. Around 10pm, my ex and I handed our keys over to the apartment’s new tenants and drove the final carloads of stuff over to this house. One of my roommates was already here, and had been all evening. She told us about all the trick-or-treaters she’d turned away. After scarfing down some sort of junk food, I made a hasty decision to go out and try to make something of my Halloween. This ended up with me sitting in a bar alone, completely wiped out and lost in my own hopeful/terrified thoughts.

When we all moved in, there was no shower, there was no central heat, the roof leaked, the walls were unsheetrocked and uninsulated. It was cold and dirty and unpleasant. At first, it felt like it could only get better. For a while, it did. But where I am right now is not where I was picturing myself back then.

I live alone now, except for my dog and cat. I work on the house alone, I pay the bills, I take the trash out. It feels like I’m doing it for no one, because I have got to admit that I’ve mostly stopped caring. I want the remodeling done so I can get out of here. I loved this house and I had such big plans for it, but it is not a house for a single person. It sure as hell isn’t a house for a single person without a pickup truck.

The frustration of inhabiting half a home is crazy-making. I live in the kitchen, I sleep in the littlest bedroom in a twin bed. Aside from the bathroom and the laundry room, the rest of the house is just a giant space full of heavy sadness and unrealized potential, a bunch of extra steps between where I am and where I need to go. And I let it all go to shit. Dust bunnies pile up in the corners and I don’t sweep them up because of the construction items in the way. Everything is still in boxes, disorganized, hastily yanked out and thrown all over the floor when I need to find something, then piled back in, never where I found it. It’s no way to fucking live. If I could find the motivation to just get done with some of it, not just the house but life would improve dramatically. The motivation isn’t there, though. The things I get passionate now are all work-related, binary and easily controlled. I go out when I know I should be staying in scraping floors.

It used to be that I could picture very clearly a gorgeous white vintage-toned bathroom and walls in oceanic colors with bright white trim. Now I’m consumed by thoughts of what it would be like to come home to a warm house with a big clean bed and a small, tidy kitchen. I feel like no matter what I do, even if all the remodeling does get done, this house will never be that. It will always be too much, and I’ll always be some person just keeping it warm(ish) for the large family who should actually live here.

I don’t mean to make it sound dire. I’ve been pretty busy with other projects and diversions, but the floors are coming along. A bathtub is on its way from Nevada, though I haven’t yet figured out how I’ll get it into the house. I’ve decided I’ll probably tile the master bathroom myself, just so I’m not working around someone else’s schedule. Once the bathtub arrives and the plumbing gets roughed in, I can do that. I have a quote for refinishing the floors once the linoleum’s off, and I hope that by the end of the year there will be no more gaping, drafty holes in them and finally something in this house will be both original and beautiful again. I’m trying to make a decision about the master closet. I’m scared that if I attach shelves and rods to the wall I built there, it will come crashing down, taking with it the laundry room’s plumbing, electricity, and gas lines. I haven’t done the little, easy things, like painting the trim in the existing bathroom. After going so long without caulk, I’m not convinced I won’t have to rip all of it out and start over. But it doesn’t smell like mold, so hopefully I have more time.

The truth is still that, as in all things, anything house-related is doable given the right combination of time, effort, and money. But the enthusiasm for actually doing what needs done has very nearly left me. It feels like an eternity since I’ve come home to a home, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I do still love my house, but the pragmatic, exhausted part of me wishes to hell I hadn’t bought it.

The day dawned bright, with air hot and heavy. In my air-conditioned conveyance I did proceed with hopes high and will resolute to the hardware store. Determined, I did not linger over the plumbing fixtures and wallpaper samples but deftly negotiated the purchase of the finest, largest floor scraper to be had, with a blade of fourteen inches and crafted of good quality carbon. Upon returning to my domicile I took short respite and consumed many tacos in the company of my former husband, who remains a dear friend and has a skill for procuring such things. No tolerance has he for labor which suffers him to don a respirator mask, however, and thus departed and left me to my folly.

Through winsome curtains of sheer embroidered nylon blend the sun beat down as I bent to shove the new and shining blade beneath the lip of exposed linoleum, which curled like that of a predatory beast. Inch by inch, I tore it back. In my pink respirator mask I fancied myself almost feminine, though grunting and sweating with such abandon that the moisture dripped out through the mask’s venting. And lo, I did clear ten square feet of the one thousand to be scraped. The rose pattern of the linoleum piled up in the corners, revealing its tar-black adhesive and the occasional spot of bare yellow pine, like a burst of evening sunlight through stormclouds.

To my computing machine I went, and did passively peruse the shoes offered by fine internet footwear retailers. The 990 square feet remaining loom in the back of my mind like the spectre of a gallows in the tortured dreams of some doomed prisoner.

Shall I compare thee to the velvet night sky?
Thou art as black, and totes as high
But we both know that, in your worth,
Thou art much closer to the earth.
In the face of flattery, you demure
Instead of glory, you’d prefer
A role more utilitarian
A few sticks of chalk in an old tin can
White beadboard for contrast on every side
In the modest hallway where you hide.
You cry out for trim in high gloss white
To coyly contrast with your color of night
Yet are equally lovely with corners unpainted,
With perfect matte skin by shopping lists, tainted.
If I had twenty gallons, I’d do every wall
Like you, the shade of the sky in a squall
Let the realtors gasp about value at resale
You’re gorgeous and this house is too goddamned pale.

I can’t get the linoleum unstuck from the floors. I tried steaming it off with a wallpaper steamer. All that happened was that several decades of dirt liquefied and turned into mud. I tried scraping it off with a tool whose specified purpose is that very thing. I just nicked a bunch of the boards and could only get the shit loosened where it was loose already. Sanding it off is an absolutely terrible fucking idea because, as I think I’ve mentioned previously, it’s glued down with tar or something. I bought some acetone but I’m scared to use it because the warnings on the can essentially say my skin will melt off if I ever break the seal on the lid.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and it sucks. Right now it seems like a compelling idea to try to sell the house for what I bought it for and call the many thousands of dollars of debt I’ve incurred improving it an experience tax. Everything is waiting on these stupid floors and I’m scared that I’m going to end up laying down tile or laminate or ugly fucking carpeting. I was sure there was a way to get the linoleum off, but if there is, I do not fucking know it.

An additional problem with the floors is the myriad giant fucking holes in them. There are holes in the pine, which is the top layer, and there are even bigger holes in the bottom layer, which I believe used to be oak. These have to be repaired, which involves cutting off and removing the top layer in a staggered pattern called finger weaving. And I don’t know how to cut through the top layer without cutting into the bottom layer where it’s still good.

This is the worst it’s been. If I get the floors done and the master bathroom finished, I’m over the hump. I can call in some cut rate trim crew with a week’s notice and get the house to a point where I can sell it with my sanity still intact. That’s looking more and more likely. I don’t want to be some douchebag yuppie flipping houses in a neighborhood that’s already getting gentrified all to hell, but I’ve never wanted out so bad. I’m not really blaming the floors. I’m blaming my own ignorance.

Update: A lot of the time I think I bitch too much. Case in point. But you know what? It works. I write something like this and am ready to throw in the towel and the universe responds with, “Good LORD. I’m sorry you’re too dumb to figure this out on your own. Here’s a solution. Now shut up.” It’s kind of like a very noisy version of meditation. We’ll see how it goes, but at least I have a strategy now.

This is sort of on topic. I’m trying to figure out how to put the closet together, because that will allow me to unpack like 33% of my possessions. Describing to Nait how I could buy a unit online that had a shelf with a closet rod connected to the bottom, he related to me the following (paraphrased):

God said to Noah, “If thou installest a closet, maketh thine closet rods of dowel. Maketh them to sit in their U-shaped receptacles, and attacheth thou these receptacles to thine studs. Select thou dowels of 1 1/4″ diameter, for this pleaseth the Lord.

“With a block of wood 27″ deep, create a shelf for thine closet. Install also some shelves at an angle, that you might rest thine shoes upon them.”

And Noah said to God, “But God, I already have to worry about finding all these tigers and shit. Shoe racks? Really?”

And God said to Noah, “You’re gonna be doing a lot of running.”

Apparently this is from Leviticus, but all I have is Nait’s word on that, and he’s been drinking beer and mopping up joint compound for three hours.