Gym Tile Removal And Other Projects

This week we rented a floor scraper. We had hoped it would tear up the vinyl floor tile easily, but knew it wouldn't. We'd watched enough YouTube videos and read about it to know it wouldn't be fast. There's definitely a learning curve and just when we think we have it figured out, it gets harder again. In the picture above, Adam is wearing a coat but that didn't last long. We're definitely not bothered by the cold working in there. James and I have taken our turn with the machine but mostly we're scraping with manual tools. At this point our plan is to repair cracks, sand/grind and polish the concrete and hope it looks pretty when we're done.

It's exciting to think about what we can do with the gym once it's fixed up, but that's a ways off yet. The bathrooms also need a redo before any kind of activity can happen.

If anyone is feeling strong and wants to come take a turn scraping we won't turn you away.

We have a few (okay, a lot) of other projects going on too. We jump around a lot, depending on the weather, our energy, our mood or interest, waiting on approvals, etc. Here are a few I have pictures of. The porch on Building 13 was rotted and needed floor joists replaced and floor repaired. James, Adam and our friend, John, did a good job fixing that.

Also in building 13 I took up the tile floor, which came up way easier than the gym floor, and painted the floor and walls. I chose the easiest room to fix up first and moved on to the next easiest, what I'm calling the great room. It's really 2 rooms. I've washed down the walls and put the first coat of paint on them. No picture with the paint, but these are the rooms. This used to be a duplex. It's a very long building with lots of rooms

Without completing that room, one day I decided to open up a wall that had water damage to see what was behind it. Yikes, lots of mold. James has ripped out this whole wall since I took this picture.

Even though we're not planning on working on this house (building 4) yet, we wanted to see what was under the carpet. It looks like the maple floors might be in good shape. I hope we're not disappointed when we rip up the rest of the carpet. This house has no kitchen so we're trying to figure out where we'll put one.

James has begun to scrape the outside of the administration building too but a picture of that isn't very interesting.

During that real cold spell we got back in December we had some pipes burst. Quite a few, actually. We learned some lessons for next time. Something good came out of that though. Adam has learned a lot about plumbing and did most of the repairs himself. That was pretty cool.

Oh gosh, what else? There's plenty more going on but I think I'll save it for the next post.