Mudroom

I have been slowly working on the floor of the mudroom since I first demoed the small bathroom that sits right off of it. During Demo I pulled up the 80's linoleum floor to find some much older linoleum tiles(from the 40's or 50's, individual hard tiles). I started pulling these up and found some really nice wood under the thick tar paper stuff that was holding the old tiles on. For a proof of concept I got all the tar paper up (using the grinder and 24 and 36 grit sandpaper) and do a quick sanding of the floor in that bathroom. It ended up looking good.

7 months later I start the rest of the mudroom :).

The tiles were the hardest thing to get up so in the advice of my 4 year old daughter (who watched an infomercial on day when we were at Hardwicks) we bought a multimaster. Yes it does what they say (the tile came up in about 5 hours). The picture is of the barren alien landscape that the tar paper creates when you rip the tile up. Oh yeah, it smells bad when warm.

However the Multimaster really not meant for room size jobs so out comes the trusty grinder. 2 days later 1/2 the floor is totally smooth wood with no markings. (picture coming) and I have 2 sets of clothes saturated with sawdust and old tar papers bits. I also bought a warm red oil based floor paint thats way to pink in the test, so it may have to go back and get tinted up.

Once the floor is done I have to get the trim up on the doors and around the baseboards, and then all that should be left is some painting.

upstairs bathroom, a history in pictures

There are no pictures of the upstairs bathroom, pre-renovation. It was that bad. Then Aunt Cherie came, and before you know it we were burning the last stained floorboard in our fireplace and cheering. But then Aunt Cherie had to go home without seeing the bathroom come back together, and months have gone by without my posting any pictures of it. Until now!

Dress rehearsal:



Here's Matt's feet, and various things on the floor. In any significant home improvement project, floor detritus must always include a number of plastic bags from Home Depot, and a chop saw on an extension cord.



The G.C. did the tiling in a couple of marathon days during a week when Matt was out of town, and installed some towel bars that I had chosen but didn't end up liking. I took them down and later Matt put up new ones. The medicine cabinet still has no door, or rather it has a twenty-pound door that we're afraid to hang:



But otherwise we are pretty much done, except for trim and some other details:




Thank you, Aunt Cherie - we really couldn't have done this without you!