Wonder what is under this carpet?

Having finished cleaning and drying the basement we started looking for the next step.  One thought (mine) was to deal with the mold and stink in the "playroom", more on that mess latter.  Gloria wanted to start dealing with the upstairs.  First order of business was to pull up the stinky carpet in my Dad's old room.  We began removing it to reveal that under the carpet pad was the remains of the rubber backing for the old indoor-outdoor carpet which was glued to the wood floor.  A huge mess that in my opinion could only be fixed by new carpet.  Gloria started scraping away at a small area and after a bit began to reveal a wood floor that actually looked pretty good.  After about a week of scraping on this floor most every day for hours she had it looking like this:

In the picture you can begin to see what looks like a hardwood floor under the mess.  At this point Ray and I began studying how to refinish a hardwood floor.  Ray and Gloria rented a drum sander and an edge sander one Friday and the job was on.

All of us took turns with it, the days rental turned into 2 days, four hours which is almost the same as 3 days to home depot.  After a grueling weekend the floor looked like this:

After finishing the first bedroom we moved on to the hallway and eventually the end bedroom

They went much easier as they didn't have any glue to deal with.  The more astute reader may notice that these are actually not hardwood floors.  They are a very nice grade of pine with very few knots.  

Our next decision was what type of finish to use.  We ended up going with Bona Amberseal for the sealer and Bona Mega for the finish.  These are very high quality water based products.  A big thank you to Pete's Hardwood Floors for a ton of information on everything from sanding the floor to what finishes to use.  

Ray did all of the finishing which entailed renting a floor polisher with 120 grit screens for the final sanding as well as sanding the sealer before the finish was applied.  Here are the results:

 The end bedroom:

 Dad's old room:

The Basement

Once we started on the house one of the first questions was where to start?  Everyone says that a house is only as good as it's foundation.  Our house's foundation was a very stinky, wet, dark, full, moldy basement.  Between my brother, sister and I we had cleared a lot out of the house, a 20 yard dumpster's worth be  exact.  Nobody wanted to go into the basement!

So our first task was what to do about the basement.  It was pretty much full of decomposing stuff.  For as long as I can remember the basement in that house was wet.  I am not sure if it was as bad when my parents bought it 55 years ago as it has been for the past 35 years or not but for at least 35 years there has been some standing water in the basement 24x7x365.  During the wet times of year it was not uncommon for it to have water standing in the entire basement.  As you might imagine it has also had critters living down there.  Mostly spiders, often huge ones.  Mice liked the basement as well as the rest of the house.  One summer there was a 4 inch long (body not counting his legs) frog living down there.

One of my regrets as I look back on the first three months is that we have not really taken very many before pictures.  Below are a few pictures that were taken back when I had the property appraised.  

Sump pumps (two working and a dead one for good measure) along with a dead water softener and an ancient ironing machine:

We started by getting a quote from a company that specializes in water and mold remediation.  Seemed logical, we have plenty of water and mold.  They wanted $5500 to take everything in the basement to the dump and then soda blast the walls and floors.  That seemed like a waste in many respects, very expensive, no chance to try to save any family relics and worst of all when they were done we would still have a lake in the basement.

Time to order up another 20 yard dumpster and get to work.  We began trying to clean out the basement.  It was an epic struggle.  I noticed pretty quickly that if I spent 15 minutes in the basement I would be coughing for the next day.  Gloria tried wearing dust masks but also found her self getting sick very quickly.  We ended up using respirators with P100 filters.  That made a huge difference.  It was still unpleasant down there but at least you could work without getting sick.

It took a few weeks to complete but we eventually emptied the basement and filled the 20 yard dumpster.  Gloria did almost all of the detail work which involved sorting through all sorts of stuff.  Most of it was covered in mold and had to go straight to the dumpster but every now and then she would find a true family treasure.  In one moldy box she found letters that my Dad had written to his parents while he was in the army in World War 2.  They were in remarkable condition considering the way that they were stored.  Perhaps I will post a few in the future.

Ray and Roger also pitched in and helped.  They made a good team.  Roger would see things he wanted to save, Ray would tell him that there two types of items; trash and trash.  Ray's focus was more like the mold removal guys so we had him focus on areas that were totally hopeless.  I also worked hard but felt like I probably accomplished the least amount of work of all.

As we were beginning to finally win the war on the cleanup the the next question became what to do with the water problem.  Gloria found a contractor named Rick Holland who calls himself the "Wet Basement Doctor".  He gave us a quote for a fraction of the price I had expected to come in and install a french drain system around the inside.  He did a great job and even hauled out the giant dead water heater that was down there.  This heater had actually lasted over 60 years before finally failing.  When Dad had it replaced the plumbers told him that it was too big to ever remove.  It stood about 5'6" tall and was about 40" in diameter.  Rick managed to get it out, I think he saw it as a challenge.

After finishing the original job we had Rick come back and replace the rotten old windows with glass blocks.  I am happy to report that after the wettest July on record, our basement continues to by dry.  It is amazing.   Here are some pictures of the completed job:

 Here is where the old water heater was:

 This is the coal room which latter became Dad's workshop:

 There are even still some spiders hanging out.  Note this guy that I found today:

 Here is one of the new windows:

Mission Impossible??

This is the beginning of my blog on the biggest project I have ever taken on, and by "I" I really mean "WE".  Gloria and I are attempting to bring my childhood home back from it's current neglected state with the intent of moving in.

My family moved to this house in the fall of 1960.  At that time it could have been described as a house in the country.  The house is on 10 acres and at the time had farms around it.  At that time it was outside the city limits.  Today it sits within the city limits, surrounded by modern neighborhoods of plastic houses on tiny lots.  Over the years my Dad turned down many offers for the property from developers but always told them to get lost.  He managed to live in the house until he was 96 years old.   After his passing last fall my brother and sister and I had to figure out what to do with it.  They agreed to let me buy them out for a very reasonable price.  I think they both wanted to see it stay in the family, not necessarily their family.

In mid may 2015 it officially became our property problem.  The job of rejuvenating the property is actually many jobs in one: cleaner, sorter, junk remover, construction manager, handyman, farmer and family archivist.  Here is a picture of the back of the house:

Here is the "back field":

As you can see it is well on it's way to returning to a forest!