Daily Archives: May 19, 2008

‘Broom Smoke’ an at…

If you’re not from Pittsburgh you don’t understand the ‘an at’..

but anyway, so the people who had this house before us decided to add an addition to the house, it’s small room that is the laundry room, room enough for washer/dryer a little space to walk around and some shelves and cupboards, it’s off of the kitchen. It’s, I would estimate 10 feet x 15 feet, Nice idea but bad design, it’s actually a ‘real addition’ to the house, they knocked out some bricks, added a couple doors, plumbing and that’s it.. no heat at all, so every year the pipes would freeze, so of course they burst over the winter and ruined the floor and wall so I’m in process of repairing it.

The floor, well it was bad when we moved in, but throw a nice rug down and it’s fine, one of those things that I’ll get too eventually… well eventually is here, I decided to take a closer look at the damage and it’s not repairable without a whole lot of work and money, the floor that is, the walls are an easy fix, some drywall/paint and it’s done.

So I decided to just refinish the original hard wood flooring in the kitchen, three sub floors, two sets of tiles and one layer of linoleum later I’ve gotten down to the wood and surprisingly it’s not that bad, all of those layers protected it from the water. There were slight watermarks but they sanded right out with no problems, there is a funky patch in the back corner but no one will see it as the shelves and fridge will be there anyway so I’m not too worried about it.

Anyway I was doing a bit of this work on Saturday while my kids were home, and my 2 yr old thought it was really cool and watched me most of the time doing this, he says I broke the kitchen and floor… anyway I was sweeping up and of course there was dust there as well, a lot of dust actually and the baby was watching me and he says ‘daddy, you made broom smoke!’  Kids are a trip, especially him, he just comes up with the wildest things..

anyway, I’m just extremely busy, but then again when am I not? I’m also in process of redoing my steps as well, they’re concrete and I’m averaging every two years I need to repair them, it’s getting tedious and annoying. So I’m trying a new approach, I went and spent a few hundred dollars on treated wood planks to cover the steps with, those things are expensive at $13 a piece. Of course though that’s not the only expense, I needed special screws for the wood, and tapcons (special concrete anchor screws) and some liquid nails as well to be safe! Now I just need it to stop raining for a few days so I can get the steps done!

Oh well..