Progress in the kitchen

I started painting the kitchen last May. I have no real excuse why I didn't finish painting it. I got involved with outdoor stuff, and it just never got done.

I wanted the old, decrepit gas heater out of the way before I painted this wall, but since that doesn't look like it will be happening soon (I need Dad's help) I painted around it. As the POs did, too.

I, um, also painted around the fridge. Because I can't seem to move it by myself and everyone else is in vacation in Florida until Saturday. But luckily I have plenty of paint for that leftover.

Now I get to attempt to hang the wallpaper above the cabinets. It will be the only place in my house that has wallpaper. (Well, not now, of course. But eventually.)

It is vintage wallpaper, and I matched the blue in the wallpaper with the paint I chose. It should look quite nice, but I have to hang it first. Have I mentioned I have never hung wallpaper in my life? So we'll see how things go.

Here are three of my lovely helpers. Mabel's job was to make sure the cats didn't end up blue. The cats' job, apparently, was to watch the brush move up and down on the wall with wide, interested eyes.

I have seen no footprints, so I guess Mabel did a good job. :)

(These are only two of the five cats, by the way. And note the lovely floor. You can't really see it in the picture, but it's in sad shape.

This is the gratuitous kitchen table shot, where you can see exactly where I piled everything that I took off the shelves, the top of the heater, and the wall.

I am glad everyone is on vacation, because there would be no way we could eat on this table like this. It's bad enough that I had to eat breakfast and lunch beside a can of paint. :)






Miss Mabel is pooped. She worked so hard painting the kitchen. Haha.

She doesn't know it yet, but later I get to clip her nails, which have grown rather long. (She hates that!)

And now, onto the wallpaper. I will post pics if it turns out. I'm not promising disaster pictures, though, but we'll see. (I tend to forget the camera while working.

Stumped.

So I found the spot where my next-door neighbor's neighbor almost burned down my house when she was a kid (she said it was her sister's fault, and I know a candle was involved.) It wasn't the living room as she said--it was in the entry room, where I'm taking up the flooring.

Actually, I'm glad I found it because we had intended to bring the piano in from the kitchen door, and it would have rolled right over this (rather large) spot. And I just bet the floor wouldn't have held the piano and it would have ended up in the crawlspace, and I would have had to take up the floor anyway!

I have that spot covered up by a rug at the moment, so no pics of that. However, today as I worked to pull up the last bit of flooring, I found something else:

It is wood, and an exact rectangle. At first I thought it was another burned spot (little firebugs!) however now I'm not sure. The linoleum isn't melted like it is in the other spot, and this seems too deliberate.

I'm pretty sure this room was the kitchen at one time--could it have been where a cabinet once sat? There are metal strips tacked to the wood, presumably covering up holes.

This is plywood, I think, put down over top what looks like tar paper overtop who knows what (probably the original floor or subfloor, I guess.) There's a gap where the short baseboard sat that allowed me to see the tarpaper, which I didn't disturb, other than to suck all the gunk out of the gap.

As you can see here, it's obvious that the linoleum was burned. So I really don't think this is another burned spot. (This is the small part that isn't covered by the rug along with the flooring that was glued down on the burned wood, which makes it next to impossible to get off.)

The burned spot spans the entrance to the kitchen almost exactly. I am wondering if they decided to put the door to the kitchen there for that reason alone.


Mabel isn't very happy to stay in the kitchen while I'm working in her room, but she'll just have to live. The burned spot is about sixteen inches wide, maybe more in the middle, and spans the entire entrance of the kitchen and spreads a bit on either side. I'm still not sure what I will do with these two spots eventually--for now they will be covered up, I guess. At least there's no gaping holes in the floor!

More pics

The pink tile in the picture below (the previous post) was paired with a not-so-lovely poop brown. Why anyone would want a pink and brown streaked floor is beyond me!

I did continue--it actually comes up quite easily about 85% of the time.

The brown stuff is most definitely glue, but it's not sticky. I'm going to try a couple of things to see if I can get it off once I'm done.

This is the opposite side from where I started--that white strip over by the door is cemented on with glue. Ugh! Someone got a little overenthusiastic with the glue right there.

The picture above is the doorway between the dining room and the entry room. I am starting to think that this floor might be original (?) because the hardwood floor is actually slightly higher than the tile/whatever floor. And I would think that if it had been hardwood, there would be too much of a different in heighths there. But I am no expert.

At the moment, though, I am taking a break because my knees hurt, my wrists hurt, and I need to take a shower, get dressed, and drive to my parents' house to take care of their plants and animals. But I'm figuring I might try to get at least halfway done by the time I go to bed. We'll see.

Okay...

I can forgive my POs for covering up that floor. They didn't cover up the green and tan tiles. Oh, no. What I thought was a layer of peachy plastic that they put down before the adhered that fake wood floor to it was actually the floor they covered up. If that makes sense. So I'm tearing up two layers, essentially.

The pink ick floor looked like this:


I don't think I could have lived with that at all. Especially not in a room with yellow walls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Question? For anyone who knows...

Okay, so in my entry room (the room you walk in through the side door and the room we figure was originally the kitchen, since the kitchen was built on much later) there is a butt-ugly plastic floor that is supposed to look like wood.

I have always assumed there was a wood floor underneath--the rest of the house is oak--because if you look in the crawlspace, there is wood there.

Today while cleaning, I am going to say oops, my sweeper snagged on a loose piece of flooring and lie through my teeth, but anyway, this is what I found after some destruction:

Pardon my flash, it's a dark corner. And the tiles are filthy--I even wiped them off before taking a picture. Yuck!

Now. My question is, should I continue? I really don't have any money to replace the floor. The colors are nice enough--and the few tiles I've uncovered aren't in bad shape. Of course I haven't uncovered many tiles at all.

Can anyone take a guess as to how old this floor is? Is it linoleum? Or something else? It is ceramic-y like when I tap on it with my pry bar tool.

My upstairs bathroom has butt-ugly tiles similar to these, but in brown:

Do you think the floors were put on at the same time? This was the original bathroom upstairs--the downstairs bathroom was probably added on the same time as the kitchen.

So what do you think?

Oh boy! Or, Why I need to win the lottery.

I made the mistake of looking at HistoricProperties.com today. And that is when I decided that I really need to win the lottery.

Or maybe all of us housebloggers can go in together to buy this. There are only 60 bedrooms, so we'd have to share, but I'm sure we could convert something, like a carriage house, or something. We'd also have to share the title of baron, too.

Oh, wait a second, maybe we wouldn't have to share--there are "numerous solid oak libraries" too. I'd take one of those. You all can fight over the rest of it. :)

(Honestly, I can't imagine that it only has 60 bedrooms!)

Hey--there are even bungalows, and apartments, too! I'm sure we'd all fit. So, what do you say? :)

Spare time?

Here is what I do when I'm not:

a. at work
b. doing housework
c. writing books
d. mowing the lawn or gardening
e. working on the house
f. cleaning up after the crew
g. sleeping
h. eating
i. surfing the internet
j. commuting
k. ummmmm.

More information can be found over at my main blog, DisOrganization, if you're so inclined to wander over!