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

[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.