The House

I am getting overwhelmed right now so need to sit and blog. Our house is becoming a huge money pit and I am scared. Let me tell you about the latest foray into trying to fix the house up. Our neighbors had told us that we had hardwood floors under the carpet downstairs. We were very excited as I really had wanted a house with all hardwood. It is so much easier to deal with when you have pets because accidents always happen no matter how well trained your pets are. Our favorite house when we were looking to buy had gorgeous hardwood floors but the backyard was the size of a postage stamp and I knew tony would not help me walk dogs so we passed on it. Anyway, we had decided to pull up the carpet in the living room first and viola, the hardwood was there underneath it, looking good with minimal amount of repair needed. There is a patch that needs to be taken out and redone but overall, a little sanding, a little wood putty here and there, and a little protective stain and it would be looking fabulous. Tony also had decided to redo the baseboards as well, which is fine with me.

We were so excited that everything looked good but really wanted to see if there was hardwood under the dining room area floor as well. We were told that the dining room use to be the kitchen and that the current kitchen was an add on. This concerned us as in a kitchen, you will have all of your appliances which could damage the quality of the floor. For that very reason, we waited for a long time to do anything to the dining room floor. Also, they had built a platform over the floor to raise up the room. The dining room doesn't have doors so the kitchen, dining room, and living room are just joined as one big room so we thought that the step up was built to make it more like a separate room. Well, tony is laid off so he thought now would be a good time to get in there and rip up the platform and look at the floor so when we had the money, we could refinish it all at the same time. Unfortunately for us, there was no floor under the platform, only dirt. Currently, we just have the plywood platform down and will probably have to live with it that way for a while till we can afford to lay down a new floor. I don't want to just lay some thing down cheap and I sure as hell don't want anymore carpet. I think i would walk on dirt versus having anymore carpet laid down. Carpet is something I really hate, especially having pets. It seems as though our very obedient, good dogs were using the carpet in both rooms as a restroom and we didn't know. I have a very sensitive nose and I never smelled pee but they were peeing. Tony also had to rip up the baseboards to get the carpet tack strips up. I think at this point, since everything is so torn up, we might as well go ahead and paint the room if we are going to paint. I prefer white walls but Tony likes color and he has picked out a green color that I sort of like. I am sure it will look good when he gets it on the wall. He also has some great ideas about lighting but of course that will have to wait till we have more of a steady income.

I will try and post some pics of before and after so everyone can see our progress. I hope tony goes back to work next week so progress may be slow!