Chaos, Mayhem, and Home Depot

Note: Apologies in advance. Blogger's being a pain about formatting, and it's late and I can't be bothered to work through it. 

Anyway.

WHEW. What a weekend. 

Having completely exhausted ourselves with the post-closing carpet pulling, we nonetheless soldiered on bravely. On Saturday, we officially joined the ranks of the early-morning Home Depot crowd, and got ourselves a lawn mower, a shop vac, and dust masks, because carpets are GROSS and we were both suffering the effects of Carpet Padding Lung from the day before. The amount of dust and grit exposed by the carpet was truly unbelievable, and I can't imagine what horrors lurk within. It reminds me of that X-Files episode, where the glacier melts and the alien virus comes out and infects everyone; if we start acting strangely (er, more strangely than usual), call the CDC and have them nuke the region, because there's no hope for humanity. 

On Saturday, we:
     - mowed the lawn
     - pulled up the rest of the carpet pad
     - removed and discarded all the downstairs baseboards
     - replaced burnt out lightbulbs (which was most of them, and penny-pincher that I am, I bought a cheap pack of CFL bulbs, so now all the rooms have an sickly blue glow. Ick.)
     - cut off the lock on the back gate and replaced both front and back gate padlocks
     - pulled up the laminate kitchen flooring
     - swept and vacuumed up all the carpet padding shreds and dust

 

Ack, I can't get the formatting right. Oh well.

Sunday, we drove around with these people:

What decade is it? NO ONE KNOWS.

Yesterday was my flex day, so I met with our flooring contractor in the morning to see how bad the patient's prognosis is. His assessment was that he could try and revive the downstairs floor, but between the patching and the poor floorboard alignment from the original walls, it would be better to overlay new wood. This wasn't really a shock - looking at the wood, it's kind of obvious why they were covered in carpet - but with two fluffy cats and the clearly-established evils of carpet, wood floors are not negotiable. They have to happen. Luckily, after a couple of annoying encounters with other contractors, the flooring guy was prompt, straightforward, and not that expensive. We're negotiating the contract details now, but I'm hopeful it will work out. The house will look SO MUCH BETTER with actual floors. 

 Master bedroom - lovely original floors and horrible staples; horrible kitchen linoleum

 
After the flooring guy left, I started pulling down the wire shelving and closet doors in the two upstairs bedrooms. Most of the screws had been haphazardly painted over, but my trusty drill was victorious. I would, however, like to point out to any potential child readers: we've all been there, engaged in some aggressive, erm, digital nasal cleaning, and immediately upon extraction discovered a lack of tissue on which to wipe the aforementioned digit. THE WALL IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE. Some poor future soul - for instance, say, myself - will be laboring to extract drywall screws in your closet, and will with no small amount of horror identify brown lumps near the corner that are most definitely not bug larvae. This poor future soul will then do the math - having a general idea of the age of the former child tenants - and realize that your leavings have been there for the better part of two decades. 

Everyone told us renovation was going to be hard and expensive. Not one person warned us about fossilized boogers. 

Around noon, my phone started to chime with Facebook notifications: the gay marriage ban here in Oregon had been officially overturned! I had to freak out and call and text people, and then take a long moment to thumb through the first few pictures of newly-married couples delirious with joy; and then take another long moment to sit on the torn-up floor of MY HOUSE, the home I'm creating with my beloved husband, and sniffle a little because so many people I love can now legally be with their beloved partners.

Then I got to pretend I was my dad and wear a toolbelt and hammer nails out of the pieces of un-peed-upon trim that can be saved. It was awesome. AND THEN I sat on OUR FRONT PORCH and said hello to about four separate neighbors who waved and introduced themselves as they walked their dogs. After living in a completely anonymous apartment building for the last five years, it's both refreshing and unsettling to have our neighbors be so interested and engaged with each other. (But I can already tell: I'm going to make some FANTASTIC dog friends.)

Day 0: Here we go!

So, this was Wednesday:

Beloved Husband standing by our sign. SALE STILL PENDING.

And this was yesterday:

MUCH SIGNING. SO PAPER. SUCH LEGAL.

And (drumroll please) THIS IS TODAY:

KEYS OPEN DOORS

I may have run shrieking around the house. THIS IS OUR HOUSE. THIS HOUSE IS OURS. The stairs are ours! The kitchen is ours! THIS IS THE KEY AND THE KEY IS OURS AND THE HOUSE IS OURS AND AAAAAAAAAAAAA. I'm sure our new neighbors think we either have a small excitable dog, or several loud children. Nope, just me!

My goal upon receiving the key from our fairy godmother agent Patti was always to rip up the horrible carpet (horrible horrible horrible carpet). Let the demolition commence!

 

 Jesse starts in on the living room carpet.

SO MUCH FUN. 

Living room, mostly demolished. 

I knew going in it was going to be gross - the carpet was easily 15 years old and had reached that sort of threadbare, creepily moist stage of decomposition - but yikes, it was bad. Evidence strongly pointed to an incontinent feline tenant somewhere in the past, and where the carpet padding wasn't mysteriously and strongly adhered to the floorboards beneath, there was a thick coating of dust. (My guess was ground up cat litter, cheerios and sawdust, although my bestie Victoria helpfully pointed out later that statistically speaking, it was probably mostly skin cells. THANKS FOR THAT. I'LL BE OVER HERE, SWIMMING IN BLEACH.)

BUT despite the grossness, we got all of the carpet and most of the padding up, and into the garage, where it awaits a trip to the dump later this weekend. (As soon as we locate a dump.)

    

Looking into the den (left) and the living room (right).

I was really afraid that the wood under the carpet would be heavily damaged, but despite the cat smell (yecccch) it looks like we may be able to salvage it. I ripped up the laminate in front of the front door, and the original Douglas fir planks underneath are barely touched. It's absolutely gorgeous, and exactly what I was hoping to find. Hopefully the rest will be just as beautiful when it's stripped and refinished. 

And now, we're sore and exhausted. BUT WE'RE HOMEOWNERS. Even after being in the house awhile and getting its dust all over us, it's hard to believe after all this waiting, it's actually ours. It doesn't seem real yet. And coming back to our apartment - much as I love it, it's filled with boxes right now, and even tighter than usual - was anticlimatic. Home is still the apartment, but hopefully, once we get the house in a more livable condition, it'll start to feel more solid.

THE ADVENTURE WILL CONTINUE.

Drumroll please!

Holy shit, we just bought a house.

Teetering on the edge of homeownership...

WE ARE SO STINKING CLOSE TO HAVING A HOUSE I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT. For weeks we've been edging closer and closer, and we're ALMOST THERE.

What's standing between us and closing? A 2'x2' piece of plywood and a broken window. The underwriter won't sign off on our loan until the cracked kitchen window is replaced, and the hole above the stairs is fixed. (Never mind that we asked for the hole to be cut, so our inspector could make sure the bathrooms weren't being vented into the attic. Nope. The way the appraiser made it sound, the hole is a sign that the house is in imminent danger of collapse.) Both of these things were supposed to be fixed Monday, but they weren't - although the roofers finally installed the missing skylight, so that's a bonus. Last night, we got a call from Patti saying that the window installers finally came...and proceeded to break the glass during installation. Conveniently, it's a giant 5x8 panel that needs to be special ordered. They might have the order in by Friday, which was the end date of our extension. We're hoping the underwriter is fine accepting a paid receipt for the work, so we can get our keys and get in. I have carpets to rip up! Our living room is full of boxes! Houuuuuuse.

Breathing. Breathing is good. God, I'm developing a twitch, and the damn thing isn't even OURS yet.