So you bought a house: Day 1

As was shared yesterday, we finally have a house here in Oregon! It feels as though it's taken an eternity, particularly as we've been living a transient life in our small camper, moving from site to site every 7-14 days, but it did happen. While we technically aren't quite living in the house, today was officially day one of our hopeful transformation. 

Trying to decide what to do first can be challenging, but in this case it was pretty simple for us: the carpet throughout the house had to go. There are quite a few not-so-pleasant smells lingering (despite the extreme kindness of our agent who had the house professionally cleaned and scrubbed for us just prior to closing), so we know that getting rid of the fabrics in the house often helps to start dissipating the unwanted odors. So, our goal was to dispose of as many of the fabric things in the house today as was humanly possible.

Because of our current form of housing arrangements (the camper), we are living with limited clothing, so today we had maxed out the time between laundromat visits. While I went to clean our clothes, Sam got started ripping out the upstairs carpet. 

We weren't entirely sure what we were going to find under any of the carpet in the house, but living in a former lumber town, my hopes were high that there would be wood floors, even upstairs -- though we were aware from the start that it was kind of a best-case and unlikely scenario hope. 

When I returned from dealing with laundry, Sam said, "Will you come upstairs for a minute to take a look at the floors?"

The carpet upstairs in an open/loft sort of area.

I was concerned because generally that means something really bad, but when I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see wood. Wood! Original wood. It is likely that the upstairs wasn't finished when the house was built, and the wood was probably put in to be able to store items in the attic space, but for us, it was definitely a find, so we are super excited!!

The wood floors we'd hoped to find. Yay!! They're in rough shape in spots, but that is part of what will 

ultimately make it amazing, I'm sure.

It may not look like much now, but when we finally get to working on the upstairs area, this should be an interesting feature to the home. We won't start working on this area just yet because we need to focus on the main living space first, but being able to rip out the stinky smells of former dog urine and dog food (the former residents opened the dog food and spread it all over the carpet upstairs - nice, huh?) was very exciting. Parts of the wood found are painted, so we're not quite sure what we'll end up doing quite yet, but that will be part of the adventure with this house.

Since I had arrived back, Sam now had the tools he needed to put in the dog door for B-dog. She hasn't had one for so many months now that I can't help but wonder if we'll have to re-teach her to use it, but while Sam went to work on that, I decided to rip out the downstairs carpet. 

Living Room carpet after it had been cleaned.

This carpet is newer (it probably hasn't been installed for more than a year, I'd guess, as the former owner saved the rest of the rolls for us to finish the upstairs area he never got to complete), but we're really not fans of carpet, especially with a dog or any pet that roams freely in the house. So, it all had to go.

We knew before I started ripping this section of carpeting out that there was wood, but we weren't sure if it was complete or what kind of shape it would be in, so it was interesting to take the carpet up in pieces, along with the padding, to see what we'd discover. 

In case you were wondering, this is why we don't like carpet. This was already gross and it was in relatively good shape.

Even getting down to the padding, it seemed better than the carpet. The room appeared lighter and brighter (the house has appeared very dark any time we've looked at it prior to closing because of the dark curtains and, I believe, due to the carpet color(s)). By the time all the flooring was out on the main level, I was pretty happy.

The living room has painted wood floors under the now removed carpet. 

Now, the task of removing all the padding staples. Ack!

More wood floors were found, but these had been painted at some point. Again, I'm not entirely sure at this moment what we'll end up doing with these, but there will be some experimentation to see what makes the most sense. There are a couple of places that need some patching done and we still need to pull the linoleum at the front door, as the wood runs under that area as well.

Rough patches were found in spots, so some work will need to be done to see what we can do with these to make them work.

There are some pretty rough spots on the main level as well. The photo above was taken in the dining area, which seems to be the roughest part of the flooring for some reason. I can't quite tell yet what is going on. It almost looks as though the wood sat in water for an extended period, but until I can do more work on them, we'll have to wait and see.

After pulling the carpet and padding, we now have the task of pulling up all the staples. We were able to pull most of them in the living/dining area, but there are still quite a few left in other areas of both the main level and upstairs (as well as the stairs themselves), so this will be an ongoing task for a bit. We both have blistered hands as it's been a bit since we've had to do this sort of work, so we perhaps spent a bit too long on this chore today. 

We spent about 6-7 hours at the house today working, but we both think it was well worth it to know what was under all the carpeting. Now, we can continue with staple pulling and move on to the next tasks, whatever those may turn out to be. Our organization list still hasn't materialized, but getting this task done as soon as possible was important to us.

Tomorrow, we have to actually move to the property (and by move, I mean, we'll be sleeping in the camper on the house property until our stuff arrives next week), so it should be interesting to see how we prioritize tasks. Can't wait to share more as we get moving on this big project.