Adventure in Carpentry, part 2.8
This time, however, is working INSIDE the house, and not outside.
To explain the why and the what of the thing, we have to make a little trip into the past, a trip of about 20 years.
At that time I had just switched job from the little town of Roermond (in the south) to the frenzy-ish metropolis of Amsterdam (in the north). And since I was still living in the south, this meant a home-office commute of about 2.5 hours (!). Obviously I was looking for an accomodation in Amsterdam or nearby.
The problem is that finding house in Amsterdam was already kinda impossible (even more today), so I was more looking in the neighboor than in the city.
When I got offered the place I live nowadays, I decided in about 30 seconds, also because my interest was less "what the house looks alike" and more "how do I stop driving for half a day". This also meant that my "approach" was the opposite of the standard Dutch procedure.
Normally, when a dutch person buy an house, it doesn't give a flying fuck how the house looks inside. The next step after getting the keys, is to DEMOLISH everything inside and then rebuild everything from scratch. And yes, this sometimes costs more than buying the house. It also means between getting the key and walking into the house, a good 5 or 6 months can pass by. However, I didn't have the time, the will (nor the money) to do such thing. So once got the keys, I planted down a bed an moved in immediately.
This means that I kept the house "as it was" from the previous owners.
The only thing I did in the beginning was to renew the kitchen, partly because it wasn't working, and mostly because the colour-scheme picked by the old owners was... questionable (dark-brown and green) and was making me wanting to puke every time. During the work I also found out that the old kitchen was partly built INTO the floor...
Another thing that was already there was the 'moquette' (or carpet, wathever) in the old master bedroom. It was already kinda dirty, and since I left it there because I had no intention of spending time on it, it was the same as now. 20 years later. And if you have cats, you should know that they tend to scratch everything they see and puke on everything the stand on. And that definitively did not help.
Therefore, this is the year I decided to get rid of that thing. It was one of my 'mini-project' that I had for this year "renovation". The problem I immediately met, was that the damn thing was solidly glued to the subfloor. And after having asked around, I decided the best thing to do was to call a pro to remove that thing.
I contacted a company that sent somebody to have a look, and then a couple of days later, he showed up with something that looked like a spade with teeth. And in about 2 hours, the carpet was rolled over in front of the house waiting for the garbage truck.
This left me with a floor-less room.
At this point I had to decide what to do, and after looking around a bit, I decided to go with the 'do-it-yourself' and put down some laminate floor.
As usual, my experience in constructions approach the zero.
After getting the 'insulating subfloor', and sweating a lot to install it, I had a beautiful floor that looked like it could've been in a sci-fi from the '70s.
Then it was the moment to go get the laminate and install it. Acquiring the laminate was easy, my local diy store has a large selections, but to put it down I had to wait for a moment without rain, because to cut that stuff I need/want to do it outside, not inside, and for that I need some good weather. Not necessarily sunny, but at least not raining.
Hence, a grey-but-dry saturday morning, I started taking the boxes a part and see how to put down this thing. Ok, the first two pieces are down, now I need to cut the part... wait, the other side... (get out, cut, came back in), put it down. Good, first line donw. Ok, next one. Measure, check, measure again, check again, cut, put it down... next line... next line...
After a bit I have a piece of the floor that is "functional" good. Let's continue.
After a while I check my watch. Wow, is almost noon. Ok, another line and then I'll go get something to eat...
Hummm... I'm getting a bit tired, I'll do another line and then take a break...
Ater another while I check the time again and it's 3 pm! But I'm half-way through! I can make it!
At one point I turn around and... ho, this is the last line! I did it! Well... it didn't came out too bad...
...
...
I NEED MORE!!!
Yeah, this thing is addictive, is like Minecraft...
Anyhow, after recovering from this tour-de-force (I went up/down the stairs/in/out of the house like a billion time), I finished the corners and then is a matter of bringing the stuff back into the room, that is basically my "work/craft" room.
And since I suck at math, I still have 3 full boxes of laminate, and since I had the carpet took out also from the stairs, I decided that I'm going to put laminate there too. But not now, first I need to remove the 14 layers of paints that were under the carpet... each layer a different colour of course.
Davide Bianchi
29/11/2022 11:23
