House in Progress Diary

Getting the Smell Out

The house still smells less than ideal. We were determined to do a little work on that this past weekend.

Some of it is due to old rugs which we left in place to protect the floors as we moved things around. Some of it was due to the basement drains, which still continue to plague us everyday. (groan) No air circulation was a problem before we could open the windows. And I think some of it is still going to be there until we redo the floors and tear down the wallpaper. And then...there is what the raccoons left behind in the attic over 2 years and 2-3 litters of young-uns'...I don't even want to think about that.

We decided to tackle the front room today. But first! It is out to the roof to take care of the tree branches hanging over the front of the house. The squirrels had been using it as an off ramp for the squirrel tree highway. (We could walk out there pretty easily...the benefits of a bungalow roof is that it slopes more gradually than many house roofs.)

I was all in favor of getting out my old rock climbing gear...harness, rope, the whole deal. A just walked on out there. So, um, okay...I can do this. (I charted the location of the nearest emergency room in my head.)

We carefully sawed through a few branches AFTER the postman had moved on down the street. Safety was always on my mind, but please...use a ladder if you are doing this yourself. A good one. With someone to brace it from below just in case.

We completed the pre-winter inspection of the roof, flashing, gutters, shingles and vents while we were up there. Looks clear.

Then there were the air conditioning units left in the house from the previous owners. These didn't work and had been removed when we redid some of the windows.

It looked the engine from an old foreign car. But larger.

Our kind neighbor, Jay, lent us a hand with these. They were outrageously heavy. It was off to the back of the garage for them.

I busied myself rolling up that rug and discovered a nasty surprise.

The rug pad was older than dirt, crumbling, a haven for bugs and had been the victim of an old leaky roof in the house. It stuck to the hardwood floor like glue.

This rug and pad, as well as the shelves and shelves of books when we had moved in, had hidden another dilemma. The long ago roof leak had come down the walls and gotten into the floor boards on one side and had caused them to buckle.

Nice.

That partly explains the drywall in the ceiling below this room (our living room), I imagine.

After I scraped this off with a stiff brush, I gathered up what I could in garbage bags and vacuumed up the rest.

But what to do with the smelly carpet? It is BIG and HEAVY! Hmmmm....

Yup, okay. That worked. The mailman hadn't walked back this way, right? Wait though...where is the dog?

Okay. We're cool.

Interesting how long that rug has been there. The different color of the wood floor UNDER the rug versus AROUND the rug (even without the dust) is quite different.

Maybe a light vinegar and water scrubbing will get the stickiness out of that hardwood floor.

One more big chore today and then it is back to tagging. We CANNOT get rid of the trap smell in the drains. Now that the weather is colder and we use the furnace everyday, we are pouring water down the drains once, sometimes twice, a day to keep them sealed. We try to flush out the system by running a house into the trap for a few hours.

And the water runs clear and it does smell somewhat better. But later that evening, back to the buckets.

I'm afraid of what is under that floor, in the drains. And we don't have the cash right now to pull up that concrete. So, it will be the bucket brigade for awhile for now....

Posted by jeanne on October 13, 2003 at 9:00 AM (2)