Dave Knows: Elko

We bought our first house last summer.  It’s not exactly our “Dream home” but it’s a real house with a real yard and we like it.  Our first home improvement project was to replace the carpet in the living room.  When we moved in the wife could smell the cat urine and even after shampooing the smell is still there. Or so she tells me.  My nose doesn’t seem to work as well as hers does.  Then our cats started pissing in the room as well whenever the kids would forget to empty the catbox.  So we decided to pull out the carpet and put down glueless laminate flooring.

We drove to Salt Lake City a few weeks ago to look for flooring at Ikea.  My wife and I love that store, but our views have soured after this trip.  First, they had the Oak flooring that we wanted for $0.79/sq ft.  Great, right?  We walked down to the “pickup” area and saw that they had a big display of the same flooring, only in Birch, for $0.59/sq ft.  What a deal!  But we wanted Oak, so we tried to get the Ikea flunkie to sell us the oak for the birch price.  No luck.  We got the so-called manager down and asked if he would give us the lower price, and he said No as well. He looked like he was maybe 20, there’s no way he was actually the store manager.  So instead of us dropping $500 on flooring at Ikea, we walked out.  We ended up at RC Willey, who had the flooring we wanted in the color we wanted for $0.79/sq ft, with the underlayment included! (it would have been $100 extra at Ikea) so we ended up getting a better deal anyway.  I think I like RC Willey; their prices on furniture are better than the places here in Elko, and I’ve been told that they send a delivery truck once a week over here too.  Our next furniture purchase will probably come from them.  Plus, they have Paige Davis as their spokesperson now!  She’s kinda cute.  So to make a long story longer, we got back to Elko with the flooring.  All is well, right?  Not exactly…

We pulled up the carpet and the pad.  It smelled bad, and it seemed to be getting worse.  We pulled up all the staples and tack strips and then we got to the trim.  The smell just about knocked us over when we pulled the trim off by the bay window.  As you can see in the following pictures, the drywall was *saturated* with cat piss.  BEHIND THE PAINT, a good 8-10 inches up the wall. 

The nails that held the trim on were completely rusted and the heads came off when I tried to pull them out.  Completely disgusting.  Just the fact that someone would allow their cat to piss on the wall long enough to cause this much damage is amazing to me.  Then to cover it up with sealer/primer/paint and put the trim on to sell the house. We had no choice but to replace it all.  We couldn’t just COVER IT UP like the previous owners.  Bastards!  I hope they get cancer of the ass and die!

I cut the drywall about 12 inches up from the floor and found that the blown-in insulation was also saturated.  I donned my surgical mask and went to work.  We replaced the insulation, cleaned the wood with bleach and vinegar, and covered all the wood with Kilz enamel sealer/primer.  Then we performed our first drywall replacement as homeowners and as you can see in the following pictures, it turned out pretty well.

The flooring went in smoothly, took about 8 hours.  Pretty good considering it’s the first time my wife and I have tried anything like this and we kept getting interrupted by the kids and the dog.  I overestimated the floor size by about 50 square feet to make sure we’d have enough. (I wasn’t too confident in my cutting/floor laying abilities) and it looks like we have about 50 square feet left over. So I guess the new doghouse will have a nice wood floor in it.