As we’re starting to move our work more inside the house with the cooler weather (and heat coming soon – yes!), even through we are nowhere near what we want the house to be inside, the decision has been made to begin nesting. We will be living there at some point therefore we’ll start room by room cleaning, scrubbing and settling into the rooms we can. Even those rooms have a lot of work we need to do but as this project will take awhile and we can only do it a room at a time, we need to go ahead and make it more of a home.

With that in mind, as I am walking through the house, there are certain things that HAVE to go before we want to use the space. I will begin handling those as I can. Now this is simply a matter of personal taste but one of the things was a linoleum floor which had been ripped and was already peeling back. I would think many of you would agree with me on this one. lol. Some of you might know where this is; it’s at the top of the back set of stairs going to the back of the house bedrooms. So one day….

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Also, in the area above, the rails on the top of the landing were covered up with plywood. I pulled and saw these under, which is far better than plywood, so pull, yank, crow bar and bam! We have rails at the top now.

Next there was a closet in a front bedroom that we want to start using which also had linoleum in it. On this one, the linoleum came up easily enough just as above, but the linoleum was in squares and had been placed down with glue. This one took some more effort as you can see.

Peeling, pulling and finally I found that using hot water breaks down and melts/removes the old glue. Even so, it still took some elbow grease but with some effort, a little scraping (translation: A LOT of scraping) and it’s up!

The wood will need refinishing but, another one done! (PSA: Please don’t glue linoleum on your hardwood floors. 🙂

I’ve also begun to clean the landing floor as well as the dining room floors. Both were basically fine but seriously dirty. Mopping did not do it, as the mops became black right away and each time we started fresh, the mops still came up dirty. These needed some serious elbow grease. After all, it had years of people walking through and no cleaning, therefore this job required a bucket, a gentle rag but serious scrubbing. I also cleaned the cabinets and then oiled them. Pics of that coming soon. Also I didn’t take a pic of the upstairs landing but below is a shot of the dining room floor (also a bucket scrubbing event).

We still need to apply a poly coat to the floors but now they are CLEAN! The shine from the cleaning is truly inspiring to us to get these floors refinished quickly and a poly coat applied. Don’t worry, we actually prefer the older distressed look of the floors; it has a certain beauty of age. These are old floors and that’s what they should look like, but they should show their glory of beautiful old floors. So far, this is my favorite room. See the beginning below…