Thanksgiving....A Time to be Thankful

So, I wasn't able to get the floor done in the master bedroom as I had hoped prior to the Thanksgiving company, but that is okay. My scraping of the adhesive has been put temporarily on hold for a few other projects. To start, here are a few things that I am thankful for at the moment:

• I am thankful for a house that affords us the opportunity to work with my wonderful husband and children on a never-ending list of projects.
• I am thankful for family and friends that enjoy watching and reading about our insanity, and still love us and support us as we continue.
• I am thankful for the internet that provides so many other sites for teaching and instruction - without them, I am not sure I would be willing to do everything that we are doing.
• I am thankful that no one has been seriously hurt (yet) by falling debris, surprise bat attacks, or staples, nails, and screws (at least, no too bad)

The Thanksgiving weekend affords us such a wonderfully nice block of time in which to work on projects. These are a few that we have tackled this weekend.

While I did not get the master bedroom floor finished, we did manage to remove an "added" wall. By the way, our bedroom measures 18 feet by 14 feet, so I guess I should not be too surprised that I was able to only get about half of the floor scraped. Anyway, this is what our bedroom looked like when we purchased the house.

There are a few problems with this particular wall, such as it is not original to the house and the window opening actually extends past the wall (nice view for the neighbors, right). Also, please note the wonderful boring beige carpeting. This carpeting actually hides beautiful 2.5" maple hardwood floors. But more on that later.

After a few hours worth of work and some more electrical surprises along the way, the master bedroom now has its original footprint again.

You might be wondering how we knew that the wall was not original, other than the obvious closet in the back of the, well, closet. Once the wall was down, we were able to see the original baseboard. Yes, dear readers, a previous owner built the wall right on top of the baseboards. I guess that is one way to keep the closets looking "original", right?

We also worked on the basement this weekend, converting it into a large open workroom while we are busy with all of our projects around the house. Here is what it looked like when we first bought it.

Don't you just love the blue-gray indoor/outdoor carpet? Don't forget, we also found two more windows, cemented over, hiding behind that wonderful paneling. By taking out the walls and paneling, we were able to open the space up quite a bit. After much sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping, the workspace now looks like this.

My wonderful husband also made me some brand new, custom sawhorses just for those wood finishing projects that we can see in the future.

Aren't they beautiful? I can hardly wait to start using them.....like, right now!

I Love My Heat Gun...I Love My Heat Gun...

I love my heat gun.....if I keep repeating this to myself, maybe it will come true! Actually, I really do appreciate my heat gun. My hands and arms are just starting to get really sore. My wonderful husband has been very busy this week and some of the work necessitated him being out of town for a few days. Since there are not very many projects that I can do without his capable hands, I decided that I would tackle stripping the carpet adhesive from the floor in the master bedroom.

Oi vey.....what was I thinking?

The heat gun that I am using is a Wagner and overall, I have been really happy with it. Thus far, it has stripped the kitchen, most of the back entryway, the stairwell trim, and now a good portion of the floor in the master bedroom. Unfortunately, this wonderful piece of equipment gets heavy after repeated hours of continuous use. It is all I can do to type right now....my hands and wrists are so sore. I am so thankful that this adhesive is nothing like the black stuff on the kitchen floor. And that it is nap time for the littlest Fuller! Yeah! Break time!

The good news is that when the heat is applied to the carpet adhesive, it turns to the consistency of hot caramel and just has to be scraped off. This means I can clear a fairly good sized section in about an hour. The bad news is that the master bedroom is the length of the entire house and really wide. Thus far I have finished an approximate six foot square. I am about half-way across the room in either direction.

I was hoping to get the entire floor done by the end of the day today, but now, I don't see that happening. Maybe I will be able to get it finished by the end of tomorrow. I really want it done prior to next week since we are having some family over to celebrate Thanksgiving. With so much of our house deconstructed, it would be nice to show that we have made progress...somewhere....anywhere.