Let There Be Light
Comments Off on Let There Be LightAccording to the timeline given to us by our contractor, Melisa, we were supposed to get temporary electrical the week of October 2 – 6. She called and said she was going to install it Sunday (the 8th), but then called Sunday morning to say she had to be at an open house and would do it Monday instead. Not having electricity has made it difficult because we decided to take demolition into our own hands. Since we work during the week and it gets dark by the time I get off work it makes it very hard to work other than weekends. So of course demolition has been a little slow due to only being able to work on weekends.
Well, Monday we finally got light! Melisa installed a temporary outlet in the kitchen, so Monday after work we came equipped with our bright construction type light and worked on the kitchen some more. We started out tearing down the plaster from the ceiling, but it was a little loud when falling on the floor, so we determined that doing so would be rude towards the neighbors considering it was 8pm. So instead we tackled the 5 layers of vinyl flooring. Yeah, it was quite “fun.” Our method consisted of Patrick getting under the flooring with the pry bar and me ripping it off. The newer vinyl was hard to get off that way, so at times we used a blade to cut it. Damn glue was still too fresh. The older floor underneath was some kind of harder material (not sure if this was due to age or because it was made that way) and was easier to break into pieces. We managed quite alright until we got to the part of the floor in front of the built-in. There apparently weren’t as many layers of vinyl, but at the same time which ever part was missing made it harder to get the rest off the floor. By the time it was shortly after 10pm we had gotten all the layers off, except the glue part of the vinyl! The actual floor was gone, but the glue was impossible to get off. Kind of like when you have a sticker on something and you just can’t get that one layer of stubborn paper glue stuff off. Sooo annoying. We were drenched of energy by this point already and decided to call it quits for the day since we couldn’t find a solution.
A nice little discovery from all this turned out to be that the hardwood floors are still there. Well, except for the part where it was replaced with plywood due to the water damage by where the sink had been. The floor gets interesting by the built-in. Patrick has been suspecting that the kitchen was separated and we think the built-in may have actually been a butler’s kitchen. The hardwood flooring confirms that there was something or another going on because the slats aren’t all going the same direction. From our speculations it looks like there was a wall, and another door that would have gone into the kitchen – so one door from the dining room into the butler’s kitchen, and another door from the butler’s kitchen into the main kitchen. Patrick thinks it could be interesting to get the floors all nicely redone and have the different patterns of wood showing. Our previous thought was to tile the kitchen as it would be easiest to keep clean. Now Patrick’s not so sure, and I haven’t quite made up my mind on the matter. And I suppose something that would be a hold back too is that damn plywood floor. I guess we’ll see what we should do about it.
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