And on the first day (week)...

And on the first day (well actually it was a week off work)... I started to see the tip of the iceberg that was the task I now had in front of me.

Daunting though it may have appeared, I took the only option I could see before me, knuckle down, start working and start saving (not at all fortuitously, this was also the same time I was kindly asked by the bank to start giving them some of their money back, i mean how rude!). 

The first week started out slowly, but surely.  The first job was to have everyone i know, have ever met or were unlucky enough to walk past the house help me sugarsoap the house.  Being vacant for a year and a half (and i question what hygiene standards the people before that time had) there was plenty of that 'air-dust' to remove.  It was stuck on walls, in the gaps in walls, on doors, windows, window frames, roofs and basically every other surface in the house.  We went through bucket loads of soap and more than a few people complained of loosing their fingerprints in the process (you should wear gloves when sugar soaping for extended periods as the stuff is pretty strong - although some people just won't take good advice when it is offered). 

The second job was to remove the existing floor coverings and get back to the nice old wooden floors, right, well kind of.  The carpet lining in the bedrooms, hallway and lounge rooms came up like a treat (although it did cumulatively weight more than an indian elephant - thank you wiki mobile).  They were all tacked down, so once i'd hacked at them with a tomahawk to break them into moveable chunks, we (the proverbial we that is) had to go back and pull out all the tacks one by one all around the rooms and across the floors.  The linoleum in the front entrance and sleepout also came up reasonably well, although it did require similar un-tacking along the lines where it was held down. 

The unforeseen nightmare was the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room... In my foolish wisdom I had purchased a lino scraped (a broom shaped object with a large reinforced steel blade on the end instead of brushes).  I had been assured that it would rip through any linoleum floor with ease and that I was in for a day of fun bashing.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  It now (with the benefit of hindsight) appears that the floor was leveled out some time ago (definately not level anymore as you'll see from some of the puddles in the other pictures - reference to my safety switch comment below) by dropping a nice thick green glue on the floor beneath the linoleum.  This stuff is near indestructable (supeman would call it Kryptonite i believe).

Well after another solid day of hacking at it with the above-mentioned lino scraper and once my new power box (and safety switches) were installed I moved to the big guns and got a gurney (pressure water cleaner) out and had rip.  All appeared to be going swimming (literally from some of the puddles it created) until to my surprise, the floor boards around the glue started coming apart faster than the glue itself sitting around them.  Long story short, after another day of careful gurney-ing I was left with the more resistant bits of glue stuck to teh floor, some of the green glue in my right eye, my ego significantly deflated and my walls now looking like they have been rendered with a green paste. 

Three big tips for people doing this themselves. 

1) The safety switch is your best friend.  Whilst gurneying the dining room I shocked myself and set off the safety switch at least 5 or 6 times (and I was careful after about the first three times - obviously the third shock was more than a tickle).  Safety switches save lives, don't start renovating a house without them installed (and get them checked if they don't look particularly 'safe'). 

2) Wear protective eyewear when gurneying.  Whilst goggles or safety glasses still aren't the sexiest look, when knee deep in linoleum glue and water you're unlikely to pull of any sort of sexy (I of course am fully capable of doing so, but you, not a chance), so it is really important that you wear them.  I made it through about 80% of the day without them before I got a killer piece of wood (floorboard that broke off) and glue in my eye.  It hurt, a lot, for about two weeks, just wear the glasses okay. 

3) Get the glue/carpet lining tested for asbestos.  Most asbestos places (e.g. Asbestos R Us) will come out to quote on the removal of objects and conduct tests on suspicious materials.  The cost to get a test is usually under $20 and could protect you from doing something very stupid which will have deadly consequences down the track.  In the words of Nike, just do it!

Anyhow, 3 days later and floorboards fully exposed (except for that damn green glue!), and it was time to move on to the walls.  Old Queenslanders, such as Hill Manor, typically have VJ walls (overlapping wood) which after years of sitting on stumps shift slightly and produce gaps between them which reduces the house's insulation quality, noise barrier to outside and just generally doesn't look very nice.  So, picking up the caulking gun and preparing my index finger for a lot of rubbing I began to 'gap-fill' the VJs. 

Few tips with this from the newly wisened. 
1) Clean the gap with a sponge/rag prior to pushing the gap filler (it is literally called gap filler) into the wall.  Otherwise you put gap filled on dust and it falls out.  Very embarassing...
2) Use a sponge (the flatter and firmer the better) to clean excess gap filler off the walls around the gaps immediately.  On a hot day (or close to the ceiling on a warm day) this stuff sets like glue in around 5 minutes, so it is important that you clean as you work and don't come back to it later.  It is a nightmare to get off (but not as hard as the linoleum glue) because it clogs up sandpaper very quickly (well it is made to fill gaps after all). 

Anyway, by the end of the week, I had finished (well nearly finished) gap filling Bedroom 2 (as shown in the pictures) by myself, started sand papering the skirting boards and removed all the nasty window coverings from all the rooms.  I had power (although it was only in half of the house - I'll show you the schematics another week), water, gas although no hot water yet (yes, quite a few cold showers - thank goodness I bought in summer). 

Pictures for this week are here: http://www.flickr.com//photos/the_renovator/sets/72157629372265224/show/