Tag: carpentry

I am Floored

I have a DIY issue in the foreseeable future, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it (advice is welcomed). I will be replacing Mom’s room’s carpeting with vinyl tiles and am mentally running into roadblocks. Firstly, Ollie is a digging pup (more on that below), which is really cute to watch, but I am afraid he is going to try to “dig up” the tiles unless I get the room done in a day. He already digs what’s left of the remaining carpet that I haven’t pulled up before he lies down on it, and he also lies on the floor and digs the carpet padding out from under the carpet that’s under the edge of the bed. Fortunately, he cannot fit under the bed to get at more carpet.

The bed is my next issue. Mom’s bed frame is a queen-size pine sleigh bed and it’s big and heavy. I got a springless mattress and box frame when I replaced the mattress, and they are ridiculous to try to move. It’s like trying to move a dead body. Like, if I need to move the mattress up toward the headboard, I literally cannot do it. It just bends and folds in on itself and won’t go anywhere; Adam has to pick it up and move it, which is hard on him because, as stated, the mattress is heavy.

Because the bed frame is so big, it won’t fit through the doorway in one piece. I thought about tiling the exposed floor, moving the bed, tiling the floor where the bed was, and moving the bed back into place, but since it’s so heavy and not on wheels, I am afraid of messing up or breaking the finished tiles. Plus, the room doubles as my office, so I have Mom’s large desk and the shelves attachment I took off the desk and set beside it so my TV/monitor would fit. I don’t know how much working room I will have, and it seems like it will be kind of Tetris-y if I don’t take anything out of the room. I don’t mind taking stuff out of the room, but my computer needs to be set up and working so I can work. Alas!

Oh! The digging pup! Well, somehow, we have two roses of Sharon growing where they shouldn’t be growing. Mom started a line of them to separate us from the neighbors (they were always sketchy before the landlady’s son, who I attended high school with, put in a house on the property), but these two bushes are right beside the cement porch steps. Actually, I found so much crap on the ground at the back of our side porch and I have no idea how it got there. It looks like a trash bag busted and wasn’t picked up, but we don’t keep the trash near the porch.

I want the bushes moved because one is right up against the steps and I have a feeling the roots are already under them and I don’t want my steps to break. The other one is farther away, but the bushes get big around and will block the steps eventually. Adam started to try and unplant them but they really want to stay. Since Ollie likes to dig, I called him over and started digging, which he joined me. He moved a lot more dirt than I did. He just went to town on it.

Yesterday, I went back out there and started digging at the side of the bush and he took it from there. The bush still won’t budge! However, Ollie did find a smoke alarm, like, 6 inches down at the bottom of the bush! I got rid of one years and years ago, but I have no clue how it made it to the backyard steps. Ollie was very excited about his treasure and Nev really wanted it. They play well together, but when Ollie tells Neville no about something, Nev backs off even though he is eight months older. Maybe because Ollie is 10 feet tall.

Oliver has started blocking when he is playing with Neville, and he’s really good at it. He does what basketball players do with their backs towards the opponent and looking back at them and moving around. The bad thing about this is he is doing it with me. I have acquired so many bruises over the past couple of weeks and I know they’re from the pups. I am very knock-overable, so I’m trying to get them to stop being so aggressive with me, which is going…okay.

We’ve been casually working on them not jumping up on me when I’m standing or walking. It’s very hard trying to train Ollie with Nev there because they influence each other and a lot of times it’s not good influence. Ollie is much more stubborn and wants to do his own thing; Nev really spoiled me because he was a breeze. I wish Adam had continued his training using actual training methods and not just yelling like a psycho.

My Passel of Abnormals

So, the cats and pups have completely ruined the living room floor, and I was stressing about replacing it but it looks like the subfloor will be the most expensive thing. Mom would have gotten rid of the cats a long time ago, but they’re my kids. The image above is a VR-generated image from The Home Depot of what the living room would look like with the flooring I chose. It’s kind of jarring because it’s a carpeted floor right now, but I like it. The dogs are not going to like sliding all over the place like Bambi on ice, however.

Piper hasn’t used the litter box since Merlin came here in 2015, Phin is blind and used to use the bathroom under the bed in the spare room (which I did not know he was doing) because the litter box was beside the bed and he could smell that he was in the vicinity, so I replaced that carpet with vinyl flooring. He now uses the living room floor since I had moved the litter box into the living room while doing the spare room floor, and he hasn’t stopped even though the litter box is in Adam’s room now.

Gandi hasn’t used the litter box since having a UTI even though he was treated. Piper has started peeing on her pillow she sleeps on. Only the babies use the box; 2 out of 5 😡😡. Because of Phin, I knew I’d be replacing the living room floor but the pups have peed in there and the floor feels like a boy’s face after hitting puberty. I have pee pads and clean the pee up, but the spots I missed are making big bumps. It’s gross. Luckily, vinyl flooring is around $260 for the entire living room, which is ~12′ x 28′, and half of the living room subfloor is fine, I think. I had Adam to look, and I guess the subfloor isn’t too expensive but he is going to need a different saw. I hate it, and Mom would kill me, but I know it’s my fault and I will be fixing it, so 🤷‍♀️.

To top it off, Ollie has started tearing up the living room carpet!! Who does that? He has so many bones and toys, and he goes and picks at the carpet like a methhead. There weren’t even holes or spots in the places he is digging/chewing up. Can I not have any normalcy here?

Come on, kids!