Home Theater - Vinyl Tile Removal

We've peeled up about 3/4 of the vinyl tile and our trash bin is full. Hopefully it won't take us too much longer to pull the rest up.

Unfortunately we had to leave the screen in the room because we built it there and it's too big to remove without disassembling it.

We had to pull the baseboards off to get the carpet and pad out. We decided to cut the bottom 2 inches off of the paneling so we could seal the joint where the foundation wall meets the slab. The cut will be covered up by baseboard when we're done.

Sami found this old Highlights magazine from 1975 in the wall. The kid who read it must be in his 40's by now.

Got Him!

Anna's Hummingbird - Calypte anna

Yesterday, I watched this little guy go back and forth between feeder and the pear tree where he was hunting insects.

Home Theater - Soggy Carpet Removal

We never managed to get the carpet dry... the pad had been acting like a giant sponge. Yesterday we removed the baseboards, pulled out the carpet and pad and discovered... nasty vinyl tile that had been painted white at some time. We're still working on prying that up so we can seal the concrete slab and install some other floor covering.

It was sunny yesterday afternoon, so we tried to save the carpet by laying it out on the car to dry. It seemed to be working... until we got up this morning and it started snowing. Looks like that carpet is definitely a goner.

Sauna Project - Flood!

Friday evening Melissa and Erica came over to help remove some more drywall in the laundry room (to prep for plumbing work).

Yesterday Sami and I worked on installing the tile in the laundry room. We marked out the layout, cut the edge pieces and tiled the corner where the water heater will be moved...

We woke up to find our pretty tile job underwater... Don't know if we have to rip it up and start over, or if it will dry out ok.

Our bathroom and our home theater room flooded too.

Unfortunately, the carpeted home theater room was packed full of stuff since we're in the middle of several projects. We had to move everything upstairs.

After we cleared the whole basement out (and turned the rest of our house into a huge mess), we found this crack in the foundation wall under the stairs.

We're hoping it's the only one, but actually it seems like the water is coming from the joint between the foundation wall and the slab.

Unfortunately I think the only thing we can do right now is to buy a sump pump and get the water out of our crawl space so it won't keep flowing in.

Hungry Hummingbird

One of the hummingbirds showed up today. We couldn't get a good picture because it was dark and rainy (actually it snowed this morning, but didn't stick). We figured you could see how fast and hungry he was in this little video.