Removing Carpet

Before we could put down our new flooring, we had to remove the carpet. This requires a bit of hard work, but is simple to do. Here are a few quick tips on the process:

• A dust mask, gloves, and knee pads are a must! You will also need a large pry bar, putty knife, and carpet knife.

• You will need to pull the carpet free from the tack strip. It's easiest to start at a threshold or corner of the room.
• You may be tempted to pull out all the carpet at once, but don't. Carpet is heavy! Using a carpet knife, cut the carpet into 4 to 5 foot sections before rolling. This also helps come trash day, because some collecters won't pick up large rolls of carpet.  (Bulk trash day couldn't come soon enough for us. Old carpet on your front porch for weeks on end isn't exactly classy.)
• Once you've got the carpet out of the room you will need to remove the carpet pad. If you're lucky, the installers were light on the glue, and it will come up pretty easily. Use a metal putty knife to scrape up any remaining bits of glue or padding.
• The most tedious part is removing the tack strip. Make sure you wear safety glasses for this step, unless you want to end up looking like this. Using a pry bar, pry up the tack strip. Sometimes it will come up clean, taking the nails with it. Other times the wood will break free from the nails and you will need to remove the nail from the subfloor using your pry bar. If the nail head breaks off and the rest of the nail remains in the subfloor, you may need to hammer it down until it is flush with the floor. (There may be some sparks when the hammer hits the nail, so make sure you keep those safety glasses on!)

• Clean up all the debris. I swept up the big stuff with a broom then went back and vaccuumed with a shop-vac. I also mopped the area with bleach water to pick up any remaining dust and to disinfect the floor.

We removed the carpet in the formal living/dining and in all three bedrooms, which comes out to a little over 900 square feet. For our new flooring, we went with an inexpensive wood laminate in a dark finish.

We expect to reach nirvana once all the flooring is in. Two rooms down, two more to go...

Corridor expansion

The doorway is finished! Isn't it pretty? We ended up widening it by 17 inches as well as raising it a few inches. Now we have full access to the freezer and pantry. (Before, both the freezer and pantry doors bumped into the doorway and couldn't be fully opened.)

Before

After

You can catch a sneak peak of our new flooring in the photo above...

Tearing down walls

Zach and I decided to jump right in and tackle two of the biggest projects we have planned: replace all the carpet with wood laminate, and tear down part of the wall connecting the kitchen to the dining room, to make the opening bigger and better accomodate our side-by-side fridge.

I ripped up all of the carpeting and tack strip in the formal living/dining yesterday, while Zach got to work on the kitchen wall. Before, it was a standard sized doorway with a pocket door.

 You can see in the picture below how the freezer door opens up into the wall.

Zach, looking somewhat deranged, and demonstrating his new reciprocating saw, which we bought on Craigslist for 15 bucks!

So far Zach has removed the pocket door and trim and widened the doorway by several inches. Once the doorway is trimmed out, we'll be able to start laying the flooring.

Our New Home

Our new home! It's a colonial style 3 bedroom 2 bath built in the 1960s.

I managed to take a few before photos while we were unloading the truck.

Dining room (view from the formal living, which will be our home office)

Kitchen

 Breakfast nook

 

Living room

Hall bath

Master bedroom

Master bath

My mom  hard at work cleaning our bathroom. Thanks mom!

Second bedroom

Third bedroom

Now back to cleaning and unpacking...

Moving Day

Our living room last week. (Dressed up for one last date night in Austin).

Enter our wonderful friends...

who helped turn our box-filled home into this:

 Our empty living room and confused kitty. So sad.

We'll be posting pictures of our new house soon...

Farewell

Our good friends Matt and Kelli threw us a going away party Friday night.

I created special party favors for the guests, with a nod to Zach's future career as a pharmacist:

Don't worry, those aren't prescription drugs, just over-the-counter candy.

I posted a wanted add on Craigslist for empty Rx bottles and ended up with a box full of free bottles. After soaking them in water to remove the labels, I soaked them in bleach water, followed up by a wash in warm soapy water. After they dried, I  filled them with a variety of candy, including Mike and Ike, Good and Plenty, and Sweet Tarts. Good and Plenty looks the most convincing, especially when you sort out the colors.

I printed out labels with our new address and contact information, including a QR code that links to our blog. Zach created the code using this website. The directions read "Call or visit as needed".

Note of caution: if you post an add for pill bottles on craigslist you just might be contacted by someone looking for drugs.

Sold

Image source

After only 11 days on the market, we got an offer on our house! God has really blessed us in a big way, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. We'll be saying goodbye to Austin in a few short weeks and moving to Houston. We'll share some photos of our new house as soon as it's officially ours. And of course, a new house means new projects!