When Did You Run Into Will Smith?

During this past weekend, the first real hard work done by Amanda and me was started. I am now very very sore and regret getting out of bed on Saturday. That said, here's what went down:

Saturday - I headed over to the house, after some continental breakfast from the ever damp Ramada Inn, with a bunch of stick on vinyl tile. I planned on covering the third floor kitchen, um, floor with it. It was, and remains ugly.

You may not have worked with stick on vinyl tile before, and in case you haven't, I will let you know how much prep work is necessary before actually starting to lay the tiles down: lots. You have to make sure that the floor you are laying the tiles down upon is clean. If you stick these tiles to a dirty surface, the tiles will stick to the dirt, instead of the intended surface. Eventually, the tiles will start to pop off of the floor and you have to start all over again.

To avoid the above, I made sure to clean the crap out of the floor. As you can see, it was filthy:

I first removed the old baseboard heater covers/mounts, which had all kinds of gross crap behind them (including kitty litter) and threw them into the dumpster outside. Once those were removed, I swept the floor followed by some hands and knees cleaning with a scrubber and some paper towels. Once the floor was dry, I measured the room out (to find the center of the floor, where you are supposed to lay the first tile) and dug into the first box of tiles.

After cleaning for a couple of hours and laying tiles for a few more hours, Amanda came by and we ate some lunch. After lunch, we got back to work laying the rest of the tile, including the weird cuts along the walls and floor cabinets, and finally finished. After 6 or so hours of work, the kitchen looked 10 times better. Not too bad (but still kind of/very ugly):

I climbed into the car as quickly as my swollen knees would allow (not quickly) and we called it a day.

Sunday - As I mentioned earlier, the carpets are scheduled to be installed tomorrow. In order to get the carpets installed, the rooms that the carpets are going into need to be clear of furniture/crap and have the current carpets removed. On Sunday, Amanda and I went over there with the intention of clearing out two of the three rooms (one room has all of Jeff Doors' tools in it, so it will have to wait until after work today).

We removed the furniture, the baseboard heater hardware and the completely disgusting carpets. When doing this work, we found some awesome stuff. Here are a couple of things we deemed awesome enough to take pictures of.

A nice reminder (with swears!) about the previous owners, and The Dude Kevin specifically:

And an interesting DVD (censoring mine):

That DVD is disturbing. I'm sure the previous owner is heartbroken about losing it behind a baseboard heater...

Here's a fun before and after.

With carpet/hidden porn:

Without carpet/hidden porn:

The best part about tearing out the old carpeting was not having to drag it down three flight of stairs. Instead, we got to wrestle with it and throw it out the window. It landed with a satisfying thud and dust cloud. The dust cloud has since settled (and yes, in case you forgot, the house next door is purple):

A reminder: The work we did over the weekend is very hard work, physically taxing. I dislike hard work a lot. I am very sore today. It stinks.

The hard work, which I detest, was not the worst part of the weekend. The worst part of the weekend will be retold tomorrow in short story form. You should begin looking forward to it.