Scrapers, Dirt, Goggles and Floors

I am pretty good at talking Tallon into doing just about anything... I am not sure where I got these powers of persuasion, but I have them. And most of the time I regret in the… umm... Well I regret it normally right away.

So, over the Christmas and New Year break I was trying to talk Tallon in to pulling up all of our carpet (because it is just so yucky) and staining the concrete floor. I really like the way it looks and I think it is much more durable when you have dogs. He really didn't want to do it, but he finally did a little research on it and he seemed pretty excited to get it done. We decided to try it on one room to see how it goes... The lucky room was our TV room. It is the smallest room we have and it is probably the room we use the most besides the kitchen.

Then finally Friday morning came and we went to Lowe's. We bought some stain, long roller paint brush things and a few other items. When we got home we removed everything we could out of the room and into our living room (what a mess) There was one chair that we were not able to get out and the couch had to be moved out the back door onto the patio because it wouldn't fit through the other door at the weird angle. So, yeah.... for the last 3 to 4 days our couch has been sitting on the back patio... classy... Once everything was moved out of the room we pulled up the carpet. That was the easiest thing we ever had to do. Carpet just comes right up and you can roll it up and put in the garage with hardly any struggle. We were pretty excited about that... we thought it was great start and that everything would be a little bit better from that point on... but we were wrong.

(Here are some pictures of the mess in the living room - Yes.. those are pillows and blankets covering the mess... for some reason Tallon thinks that is better)

We went back into the room to check everything out and realized that the concrete floor was covered in paint, carpet glue and dirt. Also, in the back right hand corner of the room there was a whole in the concrete that went under the wall... NICE.

(These are pictures of the floors once we pulled up the carpet)

At this point we were a little freaked out. We had just tore up the carpet and there was no going back. We tried pulling up the little boards with scary nails in them and we tried scraping the paint off the floor... but nothing we had was working. So, we made another trip up to Lowe's to ask some questions. Everything they showed us required 2 men, floor buffers, a heavy duty rinse and not to mention masks to prevent us from breathing in the fumes. We had no idea what to do.

Luckily the day before when we were at Lowe's looking for supplies we ran into the family I used to nanny for. The dad of that family is in construction and has done a lot of work on his own house... So, I gave him a call to ask what we should do. He gave us a name of some stuff to use and offered us some tools. We went to their house and picked them up. He let us borrow some hand sanders and very durable scraper/putty knife thing. Then we went back to the house and worked on it some more. By the time we got home it was like 6pm and we were worn out and frustrated.


We were able to get all the boards and nails up and we started scraping up the paint and stuff but nothing seemed to be working... not the sanders or the scrapers. I finally decided to call the guy who worked on our roof to see if I could pay some one to prepare our concrete for staining. He said that he would come by the next and take a look at it. So, Saturday we pretty much spent the day waiting around... he never called and by 3:45 I was tired of wasting my day... So, I called him. He came right over and looked at our mess. He showed us how to scrape it (it wasn't much different than what we were doing the day before, but for some reason it worked for him) He also told us to use some water and that we didn't want to pay him to do it (sounds more like he didn't want to do it) Once he left we got to work.

(This is me working and the dogs taking my seat because they don't like the cold floor... they really didn't help out all that much)

The water made a huge difference and it cleaned up a lot of stuff we thought was stuck to the floor. Tallon called his brother, Dillon, and asked him to come help. This was nice because I got to just watch his kids while Tallon and him did all the work. Dillon brought over some razor blades and that made a huge difference. Then they boiled water and put it on the floors... they also added some detergent to the mix and used sand paper... Dillon was there a couple hours and they cleaned up a lot! We just had the edges to worry about at that point. But the adhesive was on the edges so it was still a lot of work.

I went in there and started scraping up the adhesive after Dillon and the kids left. Tallon decided he was done for the night and went to bed. I stayed up until almost midnight scraping and scrubbing. And to my very tired and frustrated eyes the floors looked pretty good. So, I decided to sweep and mop so the floors were clean and ready to be stained in the morning. I took a nice long shower and had a nice long sleep. Then next morning Tallon and I go look at the floors... well, they were not quite as I remembered them... also, we still had not taken everything out of the closet or pulled that carpet up... So, we still had a lot of work to do. I sent Tallon to the store for more razor blades and razor blade holder things... because Tallon and Dillon were just using the blades and they were not in any type of holder until I found one around the house. I continued to scrape up all the adhesive. While I was working on the adhesive Tallon worked on the closet (which was COVERED in paint)... By this point my hand feels as if is going to fall off because it doesn't want to work any more. I am not even kidding... my hand was shaking and I could barely hold on to the razor.

It was still morning, but we were so frustrated and angry at this point that we decided to go to Barnes and Noble to look at some books and use the internet to do some more research on cleaning concrete. We decided we would research acid washing and see how dangerous it actually was... it's pretty dangerous for two people who have no experience with or knowledge of acid washing. We nixed that plan pretty quickly. The next plan was price flooring. We decided to go to Home Depot and get some pricing. And at a very weak moment we decided to apply for a Home Depot credit card... during this major credit crisis... not a good plan. Anyway, we decided not to go that route either. We went looking for some sort of solution... maybe a paint thinner or less dangerous acid wash type thing. We found this stuff ( I don't even know what it is called) but it said it would get up dirt, paint, grease, oil and more off several different types of surfaces including concrete. So we bought it... along with some rubber clothes and goggles (because it said we needed them.) We got home and suited up for some more cleaning.

(Me in my goggles and a lovely picture of me "suited up" - this was taken by Tallon and I thought it was quite funny)

The stuff we bought was already mixed so we didn't have to dilute it... you just poor it on, let it soak in a little and scrub/scrape. Tallon used it in the closet and I used it around the edges... it worked great! We were feeling much better at this point. We got up everything we could. We cleaned the floors a few times and then let it dry for an hour or so... Once it was dry we decided to go ahead and get to stainin'. We put on one coat and let it dry... which only took like 30 minutes. Then I went in with a paint brush and put two coats of stain around the trim... then Tallon put a second coat on the floors and while that dried we cleaned up the house (as much as we could.) We went to see if it was drying nicely and Tallon decided to put once more coat on it because it was really dark in some places and not so dark in others...

So, after a several very weak moments and quite a few I-am-so-angry-I-will-never-speak-to-you-again moments we completed our project. And we are very happy with out come. We are even going to start on the hallway tonight.

Here is our finished product!