Light Townhouse Rehab - Project #6, Week #1
I'll try to sketch up a floorplan soon, but for now, just go with the interior pictures.During this first week, the plan was to remove as much as we could, since the community had a "bulk trash" pickup scheduled. Getting the stuff out before the pickup saves several trips to the dump. That's both time and disposal fees!
The first room inside the house is the living room. Some old furniture and belongings needed to be removed and disposed of.
In the kitchen, everything is OK except for the floor. Some of the peel-and-stick tiles had come unglued and non-matching ones installed. All of them will be replaced.
The dining area was in pretty good shape except for the carpet. We plan on installing laminate flooring in this area.
Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and two baths. The master bedroom has this sink and changing area outside of it's dedicated bath.
There is a small bathroom with a shower stall in the master bedroom. Notice the same floor tiles as the kitchen that are showing their age.
Below if one of the smaller bedrooms that I call "Right", since it is on the right side of the hallway. It won't need much work to fix up - Just some painting and cleaning.
The "Left" bedroom will need some work. It's dirty from a litter box in the corner, and the drywall was slightly damaged when something was taken down.
Several hours were spent carrying out old furniture, clothes and other abandoned items. Once that was done, the carpet and padding were pulled up. Here's how the various rooms looked afterwards. First, the living room:
And the dining room (below):
The "Right" bedroom:
The "Left" bedroom:
In some of the trouble areas, the pet smell remained even after removing the carpet and padding. The problem with pets is that when they "go", it can be absorbed by the sub-floor, base trim and even some of the drywall. We decided to use the brute force approach to remove any lingering odors. First, we will remove all of the base trim and the drywall behind it. Then, we will use Kilz or BIN to seal the floors and exposed wood. To remove the trim and the lower few inches of drywall, either use a rotary tool or a sawzall to cut at the top edge of the trim. Remember to only cut only as deep as the drywall (1/2" or 5/8") so that you don't hit any wires or damage any of the framing! Allow the trim to act as your guide for the tool, as seen below:
With the drywall scored, it is easy to remove the base trim and the lower few inches of drywall.
While this may seem like a drastic method, we want to be sure we eliminate *any* potential odor source. In order to keep the re-installation simple, we won't fully tape, mud and finish the joints after we re-install. We will simply splice in new sections of dywall and use taller trim to hide the seams.
The only other thing we did during this first weekend was to cut the lawn and pull up some weeds. Just doing our part to keep the neighborhood looking good.
That's it for the first week - come back again next week and look for the updates!