This old house...

I've finally worked my way around to working on the kitchen and started stripping off the old wallpaper today, but here is what I think I've discovered about our kitchen

Walls: plaster and lathe

Then someone put several layers of wallpaper on the plaster

The next person didn't want to remove the wallpaper, so they plastered over it. With asbestos containing plaster. I was standing next to the wall, glanced up at it, saw some sparkling things, took a closer look and...well, i'm pretty sure it's asbestos (based on my previous experiences (yes, plural) with asbestos in this house).

OK, then the real genius starts.

They painted over the asbestos-containing plaster. Makes sense.

Then the next person comes along with a genius idea of...(drumroll please) covering the walls with contact paper!.

Then the next person paints over the contact paper.

Now here's the fascinating part. They did all this craziness only on one of the walls.

sigh

Yay for pipe wrenches!!!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently bought a road bike, but I've been having a bitch of a time getting the old pedals off. Thankfully my partner is a genius and he told me to make a pipe wrench (put a length of pipe on the end of the wrench to increase leverage). So I wandering over to lowe's; picked up a piece of iron pipe (1" width, 36" length) and Voila!! I got the pedals off my new bike, got the pedals off of frankenbike (my re-built mountain bike) and switched them! So now I finally have clipless pedals on my road bike (which is much nicer than the old platform pedals I've been using).

Next: Get the bike properly fitted to me. Cost $100. Ouch. But worth it to make sure that the bike fits properly and my mechanics are right. This isn't as important if I'm only using the bike for commuting for 5-10 miles/day, but this bike is going to be used for fun long rides (such as the Little Red Riding Hood Ride next weekend; a women's only century ride).

By the way, for anyone who has ever considered getting into riding, but gave up after trying to do long rides on their cheap mountain or commuter bike, go get a real road bike. The difference is similar to driving a windy mountain road in a 16 passenger van versus a porsche. You go from plodding to flying. It's totally worth the investment.

on bathrooms and kitchens

We're in the final stages of doing work on the house. We're either going to rent or sell it, so the bathroom and kitchen need to fixed since, the bathroom in particular, was looking somewhat ghetto.

Bathroom:
The old plastic tile (pink) has been stripped off the walls and one of the walls was completely torn out down to the studs. The wallpaper has been stripped off the walls and ceiling.
New sheetrock is up on the exposed wall and on one of the walls where the adhesive from the tile wouldn't come off.
On the other two walls with adhesive, we're going to plaster over the stuff.
Next week, the tile guy comes to tile the shower surround.
Meanwhile I will be painting the nice new clean walls and ceiling.
Then new flooring goes down (probably linoleum), then new molding.
And we'll have the tub re-finished (too much of a pain and expensive to replace the tub. plus, it's less stuff in the landfill.

Kitchen:
Old wallpaper and paint off the walls.
Area of water damage to be repaired (by the same guy doing the sheetrocking and plastering in the kitchen, real nice and very good at what he does.)
then paint the old metal cabinets and the walls.
And put down new flooring (lineoleum)

And this is all going to happen in the next month. Ha!