When Life Imitates Bob Villa

For months, maybe years, I have been asking my brother to help me do a few things around my house. Things that I most surely can't do by myself.  Things that require "a man".  Being a non enthusiastic brother, his answer was always, "Yes, one of these days".

Well, one of these days came.  My brother did not.

Not sure how it came over me, but one morning I woke up, went downstairs just to see how easy it would be to rip up the carpeting in my basement.  It took some elbow grease, but I pried up the metal thingy that holds the carpet to the floor on the seams.  Once that was up, the rest was not so bad.

Ever try ripping up carpet with cats "helping"?  Not an easy task!
There is Muffin, one of my trusty helpers.

This is the best "before" picture I have.  This is midway through the carpet removal with half of the carpet still visible and attached.  Carpet is quite heavy so I had to cut it in half in order to haul it up the stairs and out the door.  By myself.

In the corners, underneath the carpet was rather damp and moldy.  Spiders scurried from time to time.  And cats were really good at getting underfoot.  But I did it.  By myself.  Do you also see that large closet in the corner?  Yup.  I moved that too.  By myself.

After researching how to apply epoxy flooring, I started the daunting task of scraping up the old paint on my basement floor to prep it properly so that epoxy would adhere.

Scraping sucked!  I scraped most of this floor with a putty knife.  It was overwhelming at first, and I am not going to lie.  After the first day of scraping, I called "a man" to finish the job for me.  He was unavailable and had also never applied epoxy before.  So I did it.  By myself.

Scraping became an obsession.  Peeling paint was so pleasurable.  Any little piece of sticking up paint just called my name and once I started to peel, I could. not. stop.  I lost sleep so that I could peel.  It was great.  but it was NeVerEnDinG so I finally had to just tell myself enough was enough or I would still be down there peeling up that paint.

Next came sanding whatever paint was left on the floor.  I used a handheld electric sander and did wear all the appropriate safety gear....

....Except there should have been a warning on the safety goggles.

I gave myself a black eye after poking myself in the eye with the goggles!  Bob Villa would not be proud.

Then came power washing and acid etching the floor, which I did accomplish with a borrowed wet/dry vacuum.  The above photo is the only injury I sustained despite pouring acid on the floor while wearing capri pants, no socks, and open toed sandals.  Bob Villa would most certainly be appalled at my lack of safety measures.  However, I was beaming with pride because I did it by myself.

Once all of that was done and dried, the floor was ready for the fun part.  Painting!

Half way done!

And because when you start one project, more are sure to follow.  So I decided to give my downstairs bathroom a make over as well.  Below are some before and after photos.

 

And my final project turned out great.  In the beginning I didn't care if I screwed up royally because, well, its my house and also because its just the basement.  Now I have a very clean, mold resistant floor.  It still needs some decorating , but for now, THIS is my new and improved basement:

When I was describing all of this to my aunt, she said to me, "Honey, you need a man".  And I proudly proclaimed, "Who needs a man?!?  I did this All. By. Myself!"