From Disaster to Delightful - The Fun Continues

So ... here we are.  The walls are freshly painted and it's time to fix that hideous carpet.  Trust me, it's hideous.  So hideous that I can't bear to take it's picture.

Last Thursday morning, the crew came in and emptied the living room:

Into the kitchen.  Where it somehow managed to look like it fit tidily (while simultaneously blocking all access to the sun room and to the back porch (where we grill almost nightly).

Then, they put up magic plastic walls to protect the rest of the house from the evil dust that was about to be in play ..

Note that odd stripe down the center of the panel to the right?  I would never have guessed what that was ...

That, my friends, is a zipper.  It lets the incredibly hard working guys come in and out of the room while still letting them seal the room off.  They had a loud but wonderful machine that they tucked in with them which effectively created a slight negative pressure in the room, so that no dust would want to filter out into the house (and which might even have summoned tiny dust motes INTO the room).  That machine filtered the air and then vented it outside.

Once closed in, they ripped the carpet out with mind blowing efficiency, and then pulled up the pad.  Finally, they coated part of the subflooring with some magic stuff that killed any hope that mold might have had of living and/or growing in that bit of wood that was under the carpet that stayed wet longest because it was under bookcases.

By lunch, the room looked like this:

Then it looked like this:

Note the addition of boxes -- they're filled with wood. (you can see the vent for the machine in the background).

We spent the night with that noisy machine blowing.  It wasn't the best for our sleep, but it did make sure that any stupid fibers from the carpet padding weren't circulating into the air we breathe.  Bookworm's asthma has been dormant (knock wood), and I did not want to wake it up!

 

Comments

[AlisonH]

It's coming along nicely. Glad you've got such a good contractor--those are a rare and wonderful thing.

[janna]

A couple years ago, they replaced all the windows in my library (and we have LOTS). They worked on it all winter, and put up those zippered plastic walls as they moved around the library. It was pretty amazing - and it kept it from actually snowing into the library!