Basement Landing- Rip up that Carpet!!

One of the things that we swore we would not do when we bought a house was have half finished projects that sit around forever. However, we have realized that this is going to happen no matter what because of the cost of updates, and the fact we have animals. To be more specific in this case, we have a Snickers... 

...and Snickers has separation anxiety that shows itself through accidents. On top of that, she has favorite spots to have her accidents, and while we could have her crated throughout the day to prevent said accidents, Nico cannot be crated because there isn't a crate he can't escape. This is a problem because he might freak out that she is crated and he isn't and go all Hulk on us. But I digress. 

Snickers has her favorite accident spots. She LOVES to have accidents down on the basement landing, probably because that is the furthest she can get from where she spends most of her time. However, not only was this causing some serious stains due to her neon yellow pee, it stunk. No matter how much cleaner I used, I was feeling like you could smell it anywhere in the house. So we decided it was time to rip it up....

Look at all those LOVELY yellow stains! I promise, we did clean them with a cleaner after they happened, Snickers just has super staining pee. Go figure. 

So I ripped up the carpet and the pad. Some things we found were not a surprise. Like the dirt. That was not a surprise. However, we were surprised that the concrete had been sealed by the builders before the carpet got put down. YAY! However, we were still going to seal it ourselves with the smell blocking stuff after using the enzyme cleaner. But first, we had to rip up the carpet tack. I was expecting that to be really hard to do since it was in concrete, but it wasn't. The downside is that there are now dents in the concrete from it coming up with the tacking strips. 

So the tacking got pulled up and we scrubbed the floor down with the enzyme cleaner and got to sealing. We put two coats of the sealer down and called it good. We then found that just because it was sealer doesn't mean it doesn't stain. So we cleaned again, painted over the stains and then used a polyurethane coat on top of the sealer. Although the sealer says it is "clear drying" the sealed floor now has a yellow tint. However, this is a temporary solution and the polyurethane coat means that we should have quick and easy clean up for any more of Snickers' accidents downstairs. Once we have the deck we'll look into tiling the landing into the laundry room so that it has a nice finished look. But for now, we'll take the not as nice look, but no longer smelly sealed concrete look. 

Adventures of Destructo Dog

Many of you know about our many adventures with the pittie mix we adopted back in August, well the adventures keep on going. Last week Nico figured out how to get out of his latest crate, which is a plastic airline style crate. That's three crates he's gotten out of. We've decided to give up on the crates, however, that means we are going through a whole new learning process on what is truly puppy proof in regards to Nico, aka Destructo Dog. We already knew we had to lock up the recycling bin, and while he's never gotten into the trash, we lock that up for good measure. Around Christmas, and crate number 2, we found we couldn't leave anything on the peninsula counter or the table, he could knock them down. We also learned then that we couldn't leave anything close to the edge of ANY of the counters or he would get it.

Well, this week we learned that we can't have ANY dirty dishes out. How did we find this out? Well, one of the mornings I was running behind and I got MOST of the dishes washed, except a pie plate. So I put that on top of the microwave thinking it would be safe there, but I was wrong. When the hubby got home, only a little before me, not only was the pie plate lying broken on the floor.... so was the microwave. So we no longer have a microwave. We're seeing how long we can go before getting a new one, partially because we are debating what to do. Should we just get another that sits on the counter? We both aren't fond of that idea because we like the counter space being open! Do we want to get shelves to mount above the peninsula and have the microwave either sitting on those or mounted below them? Not a huge fan of that idea- I feel like that will close off the kitchen a bit and one of the things I love about the kitchen is how open it is. The other option is to raise up the cabinets and to put the microwave above the oven/range. This is something we do eventually want to do- but since it will involve repainting, buying some additional shelving or small cabinets to put underneath the current ones once we range them we were planning on waiting on doing this until AFTER the basement was finished. This option also involves electrical work because of the fan that is above the stove now. Thank you Nico for yet again possibly  re-arranging our time line of home improvement plans.

This morning I spent some time re-arranging the shelves in the living room because yesterday Nico decided the DVDs and video games looked appetizing. That luckily was really easy and led to a better arrangement of storage down by the front door.

I guess today we will see what destruction Nico can cause in the 2 hours I'll be at work today- plus probably another 3 for errands/travel time. We'll see! One thing is for sure, once we have kids, the hubby and I will have to do very little baby proofing because our house will be puppy proof.