Prepping A Floor

If you've spent any time at all reading this blog you know that we rented our home out for just over a year and that we moved back in over Labor Day weekend nearly four years ago.  You may also remember that our tenants left some significant damage after their stay and that we've been steadily working to repair that damage ever since.  The hardest hit was our carpet and although we made a valiant effort to remove the stains and the over abundant amount of shampoo they used to try and clean it up, the carpet was beyond saving and was disintegrating.

Friday we removed said carpet, all of the padding and the tack strip along the wall uncovering the sub floor in all its original glory plus the water stains from all of the shampooing.  To say it was gross and disgusting would be an understatement.

Total grossness!

We cut the carpet into manageable sized sections, rolled it up and hauled it out.  Then we did the same with the pad.  Our neighbor was kind enough to lend us her two trash cans to put the carpet in and set at the curb for collection.  If the garbage man doesn't take it we'll be doing a dump run.  If he does we'll set out the padding next week.  Fingers crossed he hauls it off for us.

Next up was to remove the tack strip along the wall which I did quickly with a hammer and my pry bar.  Love that tool!  I hauled it out and put it in our trash can.  Then I joined the girls and we pulled up all of the staples.  Not my favorite part of the job, theirs either, but it had to be done.

Pulling up all of the staples is the worst!

Saturday morning I scraped the entire floor.  That was a job!  But in doing so I was able to remove all of the drywall mud and texture that had been left behind by the contractors 40 years ago, some construction adhesive, and all of the staples we missed the night before.  I was also able to smack down all of the nails that were popping up from the subfloor while I was at it.

My daughter doing summer school classes after we finished scraping the floor
Much improved!

We swept and scraped, and swept and scraped and scraped some more.  After a final sweeping I ran the vacuum cleaner over the entire floor and used the wand tool to get along all of the trim and corners.  We sucked up a bunch of stuff.

Next I grabbed my drill and a box of deck screws and ran around putting screws along the joists in between all the nails.  Doing this not only secured the subfloor better, but it also eliminated a bunch of squeaks.  Bonus!

The floor looked a whole ton better, but it still felt gross and dirty to me.  I knew I had to do something else.  So we picked up some cheap paint at Home Depot from the discount bin where they sell the paint that the customers didn't like and we painted the entire floor.  Not only did it look a whole lot better, but it smelled and looked clean.  Having that wood floor all sealed up with a good coat of paint should help it last longer too.

Now that we got the floor all stripped, cleaned and prepped we are ready to move onto the next project on the list.  For now it will stay painted while we work on other things, but it feels really good to be rid of the nasty carpet and all the dirt that had collected underneath.

On to the next project!