Home Renovations are like hiccups – sometimes it feels like they will never end! (Part 1 of many, many, many parts)

Here we are in the middle of one of the more uncomfortable heat waves that Metro Vancouver has experienced in a while.  There are even weather advisories out telling people to stay indoors, drink lots of water, stay cool and don’t do any heavy work outside.

So, what are me and Alex doing?  We are renovating our outdoor covered deck.  It was covered in this hideous brown indoor/outdoor carpeting.  It was old, worn out in places, covered in cigarette burns and was virtually impossible to keep clean.  We have a vacuum cleaner just for the deck.  That is how much work it is.

As you can see, it is less than lovely.  So, I told Alex that on my next days off, we would redo the floors.  We picked out a very nice dark gray textured floor paint from Home Depot and all the stuff (or so I assumed) that we would need to prep the floors.

Imagine my surprise when, on the next day, I came home to this:

I have to admit that Alex definitely knows how to motivate me.

So, now comes the really hard part.  The carpeting was glued down with some horrid stuff that is virtually impossible to remove.  We tried scraping, sanding, washing and cursing at the stuff.  Nothing seemed to work.

Back to Home Depot for a strong solvent to melt the glue and rubber and make it somewhat easier to remove.  Which it does do.  But, if not careful, it can also remove skin.  Found that out the hard way!

It took us over an hour to clean a 4 x 4 section.  16 sq/ft down – 375 sq/ft to go!  *sigh