The new place

We've slept two nights in our new place. Sounds cozy. Truth is, we're sleeping on a mattress (no boxspring or anything) on the empty living room floor without heat (as it's been turned off so we can open the windows and air out the dog-smell, which was from the carpet upstairs that we ripped out the other night -- evidenced by the still wet urine spots and stains throughout the upstairs. I gagged taking it out. Seriously. It was nasty.)

Even with all of the above -- it's totally fine. We love being there. It is awesome. It is our house. Our life. That's a cool feeling.

To fix the house, we're resanding the old growth fir floors upstairs and down. They did the first pass yesterday with 28 grit sandpaper. 3 professionals working for six days. Krikees. I'm so happy we decided not to do it ourselves. We would be exhausted. I'm exhausted anyway. Now the dog smell is replaced by a soft pine smell that the lysol marketers only dream about. Our sweet cat is a freaked out pile of fur hiding in the basement and my new husband and I are warm and cozy under a pile of flannel sheets and down comforters. It's pretty nice.

When we ripped out the carpet in the rooms, the floors looked great with the exception of the front bedroom, half of which is over the porch. Now that the porch has settled, there's a noticeable grade that's been covered with plywood and makeshift shims. Ken spent two hours last night with a crowbar and hammer trying to remove it. And he got halfway through it before he realized that a 2 ft wide hole had been cut underneath by the previous owners. Crap. That means the floor actually needs to be replaced. Meaning rip out the floors down to the supports, put in a new subfloor and then the new wood floor. Two parts with two options:

Part 1: Where to replace
Replace only the sloped part in the room and have a visible line down the middle. Or cut it at the entrance to the door and make the room look consistent.

Part 2: Wood choice
Second part is that old growth fir is hard to find now even though it was common back in 1910. Henry (the floor refinisher) found a place to get it, but it won't be here for a few weeks. You can put in new growth fir, which is noticably lighter and color and it would be done sooner.

What would you do? I think we're leaning towards replacing the whole room and using the old growth fir. Do it right. Just stinks because the old boards can't be salvaged because the wood's too soft. I hate that.

We can't move in furniture until Thanksgiving (after the floors have been finished and coated), but we've started moving boxes from the storage unit to the basement and larger furniture to the garage. It's taking forever and by the time we get home from work, eat dinner and start working, it's already late. We're getting there though. It will feel awesome to get rid of the storage unit, probably next week.

So for tonight, it's back to the floor. Lent comes at 7 for a long weekend. We've set him up with his own sweet mattress on the dining room floor. Only the best for our guests.

Seahawks game on Sunday!

-L