Time to “go to the mattresses” with this smell.

Defeated by the stucco on our ceilings (which our weekend was planned around scraping) we needed a win badly.  Time to go to the mattresses with this smell in our house.  If we couldn’t attack the ceilings we would go for the floors and the walls.

Project #2 – Pull carpet and linoleum

Equipped with the proper battle attire (masks, gloves and goggles) and armed with utility knives, crowbars and hammers we went to town pulling out every inch of carpet, tack strip and linoleum in the entire house.  We fought hard and won the battle but the house still seemed to be winning the war, it still smelled.  Still early in the weekend we regrouped and advanced our troops again.

Project #3 – Sand and prime the walls

After discussions with the painting “professionals” at Lowes and Dunn Edwards many of our questions were still unanswered.  On to the Depot of Homes.  After explaining our situation with guy behind the paint counter he asked, “how bigs is yure house?  I answered “just over 1600 square feet”.  He responded, “that’s a lot of smell”.  So far I was beginning to think that the experts at these stores needed some more training, but he went on to explain the best way to defeat this smell would be with a good sanding and thick coat of oil-based primer.  FAST FORWARD a day and a half later.  The entire interior of the house was a clean white.  Only problem we had no idea if the smell was gone because oil-based primer has its own intoxicating aroma.  With windows open and fans blowing it was on to the most anticipated project of the weekend. Breakin stuff.

Project #4 – Get rid of the mirrored wall and pull down the wood paneling

I’ll admit I was a bit timid with the first wack of the hammer against the glass.  I had images of shards of glass flying and thoughts of spending the evening in the ER floating around in my head but after the first swing my confidence was boosted and the mirror came crashing down.  WATCH the mirror come crashing down.

 

At the end of the weekend we felt exhausted but victorious, knowing we went to the mattresses (you know, from the Godfather) and kicked the crap out of our house.