Apartment Show-Down: We've Got Our Guns Drawn!

We've been getting up early to work on this renovation project so frequently that I might have to rename the blog "Before-Breakfast Design".... Oy.

John and I got up at the wee hours of this morning and primed the floors of the bedroom, hallway, and the baby's room. But of course, nothing is as simple as just anything. We didn't just get up and prime the floors. First we had to remove the last remaining vinyl tiles that had been stuck down in the hallway and baby's room. And of course, removing them isn't as simple as typing the word "removing". John had to use a hot iron and a variety of chisels to get them up, and then follow that up with a layer of the very toxic smelling "zip-strip" to remove the left-over adhesive once the tiles were up.

Don't worry, I was already in the shower at this point, so hopefully our baby has dodged the three-arms-three-eyes-toxic-exposure bullet this time. Sadly, the same cannot be said for John's brain, which had only the benefit of open windows, a ceiling fan, and a pretty tame face mask. I suggested John write a guest-posting describing the horrors of this early morning trauma, which he refused to do, but he did come up with an excellent title for his never-to-be-posting: "Somebody shoot me. Oh wait. I'm already slowly dying." 

After the "zip-strip" was applied, scraped up, and the floors were mopped down, I jumped in to do the priming while John got ready for work and walked the dog. It was a serious double-teaming effort this morning, but we came away victorious with all three floors prepped, primed, and ready for painting when we return from this weekend's wedding festivities. Pictured at left is the baby's room, in all of its Appleton finery, along with new baseboards and primed floors. It's actually starting to look like a room in there!

For tonight, I'm going to bask in the refreshing clean smell of the country air up at Fox Ridge, finally dust-and-wretched-toxin-free, and then tomorrow we're going to take a winding leisurely drive to up-up-upstate New York, hopefully finding all sorts of fun yard sales and flea markets on our route. Should be good...

We definitely deserve a break! : )