phew!

[boxofdelights]

+ Aiko slipped out the front door tonight. He dashed hither and thither, afraid to stay where he was, afraid to go anywhere, very afraid to be caught. Hugh kept his intimidating figure between Aiko and the road. I followed him, sweet-talking. Nixie let Tai out. Tai obeys me, and Aiko feels safe with Tai, so with everyone's help I caught him and brought him back inside.

+ Finals week is over.

+ Hugh and Mungo painted Nixie's designated bedroom with yellow walls and sky-blue ceiling. It is lovely.

- Nixie won't use her bedroom until I deal with the floor.

+ I pulled up the horrible carpet in Nixie's bedroom without much trouble, to find

- horribler stained, stinking carpet pad stapled to disintegrating linoleum over unfinished hardwood.

- Don't know what to do next.

+ Have dog fud. + Have shower. + Have new mask for CPAP.

- Aiko's going to freak when I turn on the CPAP.

Comments

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Tear it out down to the unfinished wood and install wall to wall carpeting? I hate w-t-w myself, but finishing a floor is long, messy and expensive.

[carbonel]

I disagree about the long, messy and expensive thing, having gone through it a couple of times. The whole process takes less than a week, and the most recent time, for living room, bedroom, and hallway was under $1,000. As for mess, the guy who did the work took care of it all. It was smelly, but that was only a day or two.

Now putting in a new wood floor when there isn't one to start -- that's expensive.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Eeep! The floor is like a zombie! *reels back in horror*

If the room isn't too big, I'd get everything up except obviously the unfinished hardwood, then buy a cheap and cute rug that fits the whole room and cover it all up. If it has to go up the wall a few inches, or fold under, so be it. Target has a lot of nice, polypropelene rugs that are stylish.

[carbonel]

- horribler stained, stinking carpet pad stapled to disintegrating linoleum over unfinished hardwood.

My suggestion: Remove carpet and linoleum, and have the unfinished hardwood sanded and finished. Or possibly have the guy who does the sanding and finishing take care of the carpet and linoleum.

My house had horrible brown carpet and unfinished oak beneath it, and that's what I did, and I've never regretted it.

Then there's the option for a rug over the finished wood, if Nixie prefers.

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

This is what I'd look into first. I don't know what the cost is for finishing a single room though. We're looking at $2300 for refinishing hardwood throughout a 1200 square-foot house -- so probably a few hundred for a room?

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Re theh floor: The conventional thing for me would be to rent a floor sander and learn to use it. I have hear it takes some practice. Not wanting to bother with that, I think I'd buy a belt sander (http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=45387-70-DS321%20%20%201) and ~20 course-grit belts and spend a day or two on it. That'll at least get you down to an level if not almost-smooth surface. Then you can decide if the wood can actually be finished. If not, I'd install laminate flooring over it. That stuff lays on a 1/8" layer of spongy wrap stuff anyway, so it'd even out any minor inconsistencies in the floor. Or of course you could go with carpet, but personally I wouldn't.

Re CPAP: I have recently learned that I have apnea when I sleep on my back, which I never did while growing up. A friend from way back has had a CPAP machine for years, and he always requires less sleep (~6 hours) than I do (~9 hours), so I am jealous and curious but not enough to go to the doctor about it.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

For finishing the wood floor, I'd recommend getting a pro to do it. Running a sander can be difficult, and the equipment that you can rent isn't as good as the equipment that professionals use. (Half my family used to work for a floor-finishing and -installation company.)

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Remove the linoleum. Use a scraper and a heatgun to get the adhesive loose. Be aware that sometimes the adhesive and linoleum contained asbestos, depending on the age of the house, so try to avoid making a lot of fine dust. Scraping is fine: those are big chunks. Getting the adhesive off the floor once the linoleum is gone, is *really* a pain. What I did was: I have a shopvac and a power planer (you're free to borrow the power planer for this if you'd like.) I took a cardboard box big enough to contain the planer, cut a hole for my arm and another for the shopvac, and put the box down over the planer, so it caught almost all the dust from the planer. (Some escapes from the sides despite the dust collector the planer has natively.) Since the planer only takes off high points it won't eat the wood, just the adhesive (once adjusted properly.)
Then get the floor done professionally. It's fast and looks amazing and unless the wood was complete crap it should be superb since it almost certainly has had linoleum on it since the house was new.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Home, sweetening home....