How Dare They!
I have never felt so much anger towards an unknown person in all my life.Last night we got the carpet ripped up in the livingroom so this way it can all go in the dumpster that is being picked up this morning. We knew we would find some nasty flooring underneath and that walls had been ripped out but I know I never expected this! The previous owner hired some guy that completely butchered the house. I know about remuddling, but there was just no reason for this even if they were tearing down a wall.
I had to make a drawing to illustrate what I'm talking about.
As you can see by the little key everything that is blue is linoleum. In the kitchen, it's normal linoleum put down by the previous owner. In the other areas, it's the old linoleum put in before her and covered with carpet with glued down padding then the carpet was ripped up and the last owner put stapled down padding and carpet over it. So right now it's linoleum with black padding glued to it with little dots of stapled padding everywhere. The office, as you know is already done with the laminate.
Now we move on to the contention points.
- We knew a wall was taken out and we figured once this came up we would see the footprint so we could put the walls back exactly how they were. This is where I'm not happy. Other than a load bearing wall, some load bearing studs were also removed. Note the 2 green squares...those are supposed to be part of an open doorway with a transom that HOLDS UP THE SECOND FUCKING FLOOR! *breathe* Ok, no biggie, we'll just put those back.
- We can see where 2 doorways used to be, they are illustrated in yellow as original wood and are the 2 strips on the supporting wall. That's good, except the one all the way to the right is because they cut the floor there for some unknown freaking reason and put all that subfloor particle board crap everywhere.
- Holes: This is what I am most livid about. See the 2 areas with stripes? Yeah, both of those are cutouts in the floor that were screwed back down. Notice the one is through the ORIGINAL WOOD! The other is in the area where the wood was ripped out and is also not subsquently nailed to ANYTHING and moves when you walk on it. It appears that the only thing holding it even close to in place was all the carpeting. We have no idea what we are going to find under the particle board one and it's got to be repaired before we even do the temporary laminate flooring. Fuck.
- Ok, so I don't know how most people put down carpet, but I know that when I do it, if I come to an obstacle say a post or a hearth or something, I'd just cut around it and properly tack it down. Not in this house apparently....when we put down a 1 piece, just sits on the floor not glued in hearth, we just sit it right on the carpet! Also, when we build a box in the closet to contain the plumbing from upstairs that is screwed up, we just put the box right on the carpet.
- Apparently, no one had ever heard of sealing a house against the elements that's lived here. First, there's that box that's around the plumbing that's sitting on carpet. We cut through the carpet and Mike was able to stick his hand down through the floor there. Then we looked at the pipe that goes into the wall from the wood stove. First, the gaps are stuffed with regular insulation, you know the very flammable pink stuff? Yeah, that stuff. Plus, we can also see daylight through the gaps as well.
All of this stuff has changed the work we need to do in the livingroom. We've decided to tackle it this way:
- Repair the section of the floor with the cutout so that it's sturdy.
- Use the old footprint to put the walls back including the 2 new beams we discovered should be there.
- Remove wood stove, hearth and pipe from the inside of the room. Put up plywood on the exterior facing portion of the wall, insulate the area, drywall over it and then caulk the holy hell out of the pipe outside. This is just for this winter, we'll deal with removing the outside portion and fixing the siding next summer.
- Remove box in closet, verify that the pipes are only for the upstairs bathroom. Cut/cap off plumbing, close off the floor. The plumbing upstairs is so fucked we can't use the bathroom anyway. This way there won't be any pipes running through the livingroom.
Wheee.
*seathe*
posted by Unknown @ Friday, July 14, 2006
