Trouble Comes in Orange!

I spent Wednesday and Thursday removing what was left of an antique carpet pad from the floor in one of my three bedroom duplexes. This unit is half of a duplex that I purchased a couple of years ago. It came with a tenant and that tenant just moved out. The carpet on the ground floor was almost certainly from the 1950s (although still in good shape) and I wanted to replace it with a refinished wood floor (high gloss floor paint). I like the floor paint because it is MUCH easier to take care of in a rental and can be easily and cheaply refinished between tenants (simply roll on more floor paint)! Using the floor paint will make the floor look GREAT and save me thousands and thousands of dollars over the life of this rental.

Once I removed the vintage green carpet, I discovered an even older red carpet underneath. Under the red carpet was an hard orange surface that I originally thought was some sort of carpet cement. After doing some further investigation, I determined that the orange surface was actually an ancient carpet pad that had totally broken down and had adhered to the floor in a cement-like consistency. I tried scraping the old pad, but it wouldn't budge. I then decided to rent a floor sander with extremely coarse 20 grit paper and to sand the orange pad off. To make a long story short, it ended up taking TWO DAYS to get that orange gunk off the floor, and I'm not talking about my normal 3-4 hour days. On Wednesday, I spent SEVEN LONG HOURS working on it. Thursday, I spent 4 or 5 hours! I finally got it cleaned up, but it turned out to be a real project! Next, I'll paint the floor and do some other touch-up painting around the apartment, which should finish the rehab on this unit.

After working so hard on Wednesday and Thursday, I took Friday off. After a 3-day weekend, I'll be ready for work on Monday!

On a sad note, one of my apartments has had two ladies living it in for the past 25 years (well before I owned the building). I received a call from the tenant yesterday who let me know that her roommate died suddenly yesterday morning in the apartment from an apparent heart attack. That's the second tenant that I've had suddenly die in the last two months. The other tenant rented a garage from me which he used to rebuild motorcycles.