Thwarted By My Own Mess

OH HAI.

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That’s the mudroom of my house. It had been steadily collecting more and more tools and general debris, the further I get in to this bathroom remodel.

The bathroom itself looks like this…

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And the master bedroom–across the hall from the currently-in-progress bathroom– looks like this…

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I’ve been managing this way for a few weeks, and by “managing” I mean I’ve stubbed my toe three times and fell off a step ladder (that was balanced precariously on a bunch of debris) once.

It’s also all of sixteen degrees outside right now, so the part where I use a temporary workspace set up off my back porch is just… no.

When I start things like this I always believe that a.) it’s just a small project so I won’t be making that big of a mess anyway. And b.) even if there is a mess, I can just plow through it and clean everything up when I’m done. My severely stubbed toe begs to differ.

So instead of making actual progress on the bathroom over the weekend, I had to step back and look at my whole workspace set-up. I decided that turning the master bedroom into a temporary workspace was the way to go, and I even purchased some fancy new “indoor” sawhorses for the occasion.

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Only the fanciest of people have a special set of sawhorses for inside the house you know…

I also decided to finish tearing out the carpet up there (a project I started a year ago, and now I remember why I never finished it… not enough band-aids.

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I cut the carpet into 4′ wide strips for a couple of reasons. First, once I cleaned it off, the carpet was actually in decent shape, and my neighbors use 4×5′ sections of carpet to pad their dog kennels. Feels a lot better to give it to them to use first, instead of just throwing it in the dumpster. Also, 4′ rolls of carpet are way easier to carry out of the house than a 12′ roll, that’s for sure.

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After the carpet was out I hauled in one of my metal storage racks (pretty sure there are at least 4 of these in my house right now… super handy), set up my sawhorses (significantly easier than cutting drywall on overturned laundry baskets), and got things slightly more organized.

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I’ll set up my spare miter saw and tile saw in here eventually as well, but this was a good enough start. And a good lesson to get a workspace set up before you start tearing things apart in your bathroom. Would have saved me at least one toenail and a lot of frustration.

Next up… actual progress.

10 Responses

  1. It always drives me a bit crazy watching reno shows on TV when they roll up the whole room of carpet all at one time. It’s a super awkward way to remove carpet. First because it gets wedged against the walls as you roll, and second it’s super heavy and long when you try to carry it out of your house. I think your slicing method is much better, especially when there’s doggies at the end!

  2. When my husband was working on one of our bedrooms I would have to go in and clean and organize after he went to work. Otherwise he couldn’t find anything and it was just one big mess!

  3. I keep an extra hollow core door around to set on sawhorses as a table. My Dad even has one he cut a handle into the door to make it easier to carry. It works great.

  4. Gotta love carpet removal! agree that cutting it up is waaaaaaay easier to handle the pieces, it’s also what we did when we removed the carpet on our second floor. It looks like there’s not much (if any) glue underneath, consider yourself lucky. I spent double (or more) the time on getting rid of the glue than I needed for the carpet…

    I see it’s getting dark over there really soon as well (or you’re working really late), how do you get yourself started in the dark? It’s something I just can’t get to myself…

  5. You need to countersink some bolts into 2×4’s and bolt them to your new saw horses.

    Also u need a Rubi tile cutter. Makes tiling half way pleasurable.

  6. We just frantically finished multiple undone projects for a cross country move. I vowed to myself absolutely one project at a time. With three toddlers now and one ALWAYS on my back I just couldn’t find peace and comfort with so much out lying work. The drive out to Montana never looked so good for rest, relaxation, and nothing incomplete!!! Cheers to you for your hard work! Wine and work always are a good fit

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