Breaking floors and breaking down

So, remember that list?  Yes, I admit, it was a little optimistic.  However, had everything gone according to plan (HA!) then it would have been doable.  Not to say we didn't try!  As of right now the list looks like this:

• Buy paint for dining room
• Buy a quart of paint for stairwell
• Paint second coat in dining room below chair rail
• Dust and wash trim in foyer, dining room, stairway, living room
• Paint trim
• Paint living room walls
• Paint medallions on ceiling in living room (painted one)
• Sand and paint banister
• Spray paint brass hardware on banister black
• Spray paint remaining towel racks in bathroom black
• Paint living room light fixtures
• Cut spruce floor boards to size
• Patch flooring in master bedroom
• Tidy kitchen
• Tidy living room Updated! 2010.09.09
• Do laundry
• Vacuum Updated! 2010.09.09
• Have a glass of wine (or two or three....)

So... decent.  This is what happened that weekend.

After my sister and Ryan left,  I started painting the living room.  It went well, I got two coats on a third of it and I painted one of the medallions.  I have to take a picture of it for you guys, because it looks so unbelievably better now that it's painted out white!  It was a long night; I stayed up until 3am painting, drinking wine.  (Note to self: do not place wine glass under area of ceiling you are painting... it will drip.)

On Sunday, I started with the floor.

I had borrowed a friends circular saw, jig saw, compressor and nail gun.  What you are seeing above is a 3/8" thick piece of OSB, that was extremely difficult to remove.  The reason I was removing it was because the spruce Hubs had bought to patch the floor was just a tiny bit too high with this OSB down.  I would have to remove it and replace it with 1/4" thick piece.

I used the saws to cut holes and try to lift off the osb, but it just continued to break off into small pieces.  I continued to work on this for about two hours.

I cut through a wire.... ? Hmmm - I'm pretty sure it's knob and tube.  At least I know it's not live (and thank God for that).

My plaster ceiling below.... I kept picturing myself stepping on it and ending up in the living room like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit.

Two hours is I cut back some osb to find this....

This is about the time I started to cry... not before picking up the paper, of course, realising what it was and promptly putting it back down.

Thoughts going through my head at this point, in no particular order, sometimes all at once.

"Great, now I'm going to get cancer and die in thirty years"
"Do I have to call in someone to get rid of this?? I don't have time!"
"How on earth am I going to finish this before the flooring guy gets here on Tuesday??"
"Ugh, worst time for Hubs to take his camping trip EVER"
"I should have just gotten laminate"
"I wonder if it's too late to just call back the flooring guy and buy laminate"

Serious.

My sister, sometimes strangely the most calm and rational person I know (other times, quite the opposite), had her rational hat on that day.  She told me to shut up and stop being an idiot.  There was no way I was getting laminate.  She and Ryan would be down that night to help me finish everything.

....sigh of relief followed by a glass of wine and some more painting.

Back to the asbestos.  As I've mentioned in a previous post, asbestos is safest when it is left alone.  In a state like paper or tiles (as opposed to vermiculite insulation) it's not that dangerous unless you start tearing the stuff apart.  Then it becomes very dangerous.  The best solution for us was to cover the paper back up with flooring and not disturb it.  So that is what we did.

Thanks to a good nights sleep and our combined super-strength, it took Anna and I approximately 20 minutes to finish the job.  Please not the Rona bag and pieces of wood strategically placed over the loose asbestos paper.  There is also some wrapped around the duct - which was one of the typical uses for it.

Yay! New OSB in with duct cut out.