Well, after weeks of work, the floor is still not done. As a refresher, we purchased the pre-finished oak hardwood floor and carried ten 60 pound boxes up the four flights of steps and along the courtyard and stacked them in the living room to acclimatize.
Then we moved most of the furniture and the boxes of flooring into the dining room and ripped up the carpeting. We were quite dismayed to find some old linoleum in huge sheets under the rug. After cutting out a corner I was suspicious of asbestos and was worried when Teresa's brothers, who are contractors, thought the same. I had it tested and it came up negative for asbestos. The backing of the linoleum was a flaky fibrous material that was pretty itchy so we went through the same process as if it were asbestos. We sealed off the room and put on full tyvek suits, booties, gloves, hoods, and masks. We ripped out the linoleum sealed it in super heavy duty plastic bags and put it outside. We then spent the rest of that day, and the entire next day, wetting and scraping down the floor trying to remove as much of the itchy stuff and the adhesive. We actually did quite a decent job. All last week, I would come home from work and spend a couple of hours doing battle with the tiles in my fireplace. A small sledge and chisel worked well, but the tiles around the middle of the fire box were pretty stubborn. Many of them shattered or sheared off and I had to nibble away at them. This past Saturday we picked up six sheets of quarter inch plywood / luan, a roll of rosin paper, and a spiffy new neumatic stapler. Over the period of Saturday and Sunday we thoroughly cleaned the floor, screwed down any squeaky boards, rolled out the paper, and stapled down the plywood. It is not a perfect job as the room is definitely not square, or rectangular, Hell, for a while I thought it might have been a pentagon with as badly as the walls were out of square. We had to do a couple of cut-outs to go around the fireplace. I was definitely having too much fun with the stapler. Lord have mercy on the poor bastards who attempt to take up the floor some time in the future. We trimmed and laid out the first couple of courses of oak where there is a 43 inch wide arched opening between the living room and dining room. The arch is actually 18 inches thick and we are splitting the difference with the wood going half way into the 18 inches, and then the rug for the dining room starting from there. This is not the best way to start, but we didn't want to start from the other end of the room since we are still waiting on the decision whether or not to rip out the radiator on that wall. So, tonight I will nail down the first couple of boards and will really get rolling starting tomorrow night. I know Teresa really wants to get this done, and next weekend would definitely see us finished, except I have already made plans for a winter back packing trip and since I am one of the trip leaders, I can't back out now. I'll keep folks informed on how the real floor progresses. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 To listen to the show archives go to link http://acbradio.org/handyman.html or ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday The Pod Cast address for the Cooking In The Dark Show is. http://www.gcast.com/u/cookingindark/main.xml Visit The Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From Various List Members At The Following address: http://www.jaws-users.com/handyman/ Visit the new archives page at the following address http://www.mail-archive.com/blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com/ For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man list just send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
