Linoleum Shmlenoleum

Whew! I never thought I'd be happy for the work week to start up again. It's a welcome break from this weekends tedious tasks. This weekend was spent tile shopping, priming, painting, and scraping linoleum from the floor of our guest bath. The A/C is not fully functional yet , so all of this was done in over 100 degree heat.

Some valuable lessons were learned.

1. One coat of basic primer is not enough to make semi-gloss stick to a wall that was already coated in semi-gloss. Not sure how we're going to handle this, as practically touching or skimming the wall takes the paint right off. Does anyone have any suggestions/experience with this?

2. If you're stripping linoleum, especially old linoleum that's basically melted itself into the floor, do it before you paint. The removal was an afterthought for me. Originally we were going to keep the ugly floor for the short term and tile it down the road, but it's absolutely icky and Construction Dave agreed to show me how to tile it myself later this week, so scraping commenced. Pieces of old nasty linoleum were flying everywhere and dinging the poor paint that just doesn't want to stick.


3. Touch up your paint when you're done with all of the work in the room. I touched up as soon as I removed the tape, after I painted the trim, and will need to touch up now that the linoleum is stripped. Could have saved myself a lot of time and early onset arthritis (working with a tiny brush and trying to be accurate is hard!) had I waited until all of the work was done.

4. Trim your nails before doing a project like this, linoleum is sharp, and wear gloves. As evidenced by the photo below, I did not do this. After I broke a couple of nails and got the booboo, I put on gloves. (I know my mom is shaking her head right now thinking that I should have known better and worn them from the start so my hands won't look gross. Sorry mom, you were right!)

There is still a little scraping left to do around the toilet.

Overall it was a productive weekend. I had some nice breaks that included Granny Gamenight at Debbie and Joe's. It was a blast! Joe, (who I will not refer to as "Testicle-head" eventhough that was the nickname he used in Scategories,) graciously offered to help on future house projects. Thanks Joe, (and there's your first shout-out)! Then last night I went from the house to my softball game. We won! Goooooo Four-Baggers!

Now I'm just plain pooped. This week will include more priming, painting and drywall repairing. Oodles of fun!