Cinderfreakinrella

As we continue to wait, and wait, and wait.... the dust has settled on our renovation in the week and a half that has gone by with no new movement.  At first this time frame had my blood boiling, but then J made the comment that at least we would have time to clean up before the framing crew installs the new sub floor.  Since this is not my first rodeo, I knew we would be shop vacuuming until the cows come home and it came as no surprise that we spent 2 days sweeping and vacuuming only to return to a new layer of dust.

For those not familiar with how homes were built in the 1930's they used "balloon framing" which is no longer used in new construction.  Since we decided to save the main structure of the house, we kept the old framing intact and strengthened the walls, floor joists, and trusses as needed.  A balloon frame means that a single piece of wood is used for both stories in the wall framing.  That means if a standard room is 8 foot tall and you have two stories, the wall pieces could range from 14 to 16 feet tall depending on the type of roof that was used.  That my friends is a tall wall!  This also means that all those treasures typically found in the walls of old homes get there because they fall into the wall from the attic. Since the wall spans two stories and insulation was not used at that time, small items often became wedged between the exterior and interior walls.  Some items we discovered were Detroit Tigers score cards, old Christmas cards, newspapers, advertisements, and even an old family photo album.  This is also the reason why squirrels used our home as their personal Cirque Du Soleil!  They had free range to travel from the attic to the basement and walnut storage galore.

So thanks to the law of gravity, all the plaster we knocked down fell between the studs and traveled from the second story to the main floor, thus all the time spent vacuuming out the mounds of plaster and debris!  Once this was finally done we quickly realized the musty old sock smell had not left with the last remnants of plaster, but was actually in the wood floor boards. Unfortunately these are staying in the house and being recovered with new chip board to make the older section flush with the new addition.  This meant one solution: scrubbing. 

Anybody who knows me well would know that a Swiffer is about as close as I get to "deep cleaning" my house.  Scrubbing on my hands and knees is definitely not my style, but suddenly J remembered two back to back meetings he had out of town and there I was with two days before the new flooring was scheduled for installation, and a floor that smelled like an adolescent boy's locker room.

After some Google searching, a trip to the Dollar General for a $1.99 wire grill brush, $12 in white vinegar, 1 pair of size small rubber gloves and 4 gallons of spring water, I found myself kneeling next to a bucket and cursing the stiffness in my lower back as I scrubbed 83 years worth of grime from the floors.  You may be wondering why I chose a metal bristled grill brush, but let's just say that some of the stuff I pried out between the cracks of the floor boards could only be topped by what a plumber pulls out of a shower drain in a sorority house!  I was pretty certain I would need a second metal brush to scrub my body when I was done cleaning.  In hindsight, a Hazmat suit would probably have been suitable attire.

So two days, a few blisters, and some dry heaves later the floors are fresh and ready to welcome a new layer of chip board without me losing sleep at night wondering what might be lurking under my new bamboo flooring!  Currently this Cinderella is planning on sipping a vodka and soda, slipping between the sheets and calling it a night before I turn into a pumpkin or throw a glass slipper at my prince for conveniently leaving town and leaving me a job even Mike Rowe would turn his nose up at!