The Floor

John even though he says he needs to watch what he says around me, never really learns. Either that, or he really does like how I make his life interesting.

Prior to getting married and me coming here, he worried after his holiday was over and he had to head back to work, what would I do with myself all day. I told him not to worry, I am seldom bored and have enough interests to keep me busy. Remembering the condition of his house/bachelor pad, I knew it was going to need a woman’s touch. Many times, he said he would dearly love to pull up the tiles on the floor, and see what was underneath, he knew that below the tile was some beloved jarrah wood floors. John really likes jarrah wood and so do I since he carved me a keychain made of Jarrah. Just recently pulling up our carpet at [my other] home revealed wood floors and I can agree with him, it’s much nicer. So he often said he would put me in charge of stripping the floors and paint and exposing the wood while he had to go to work.

Honeymoon was great, returning to work not so great. We said good-byes at his front door and I turned into my new and now empty home…

So, I thought, why not pull up the tiles. I started with the kitchen. There is beautiful wood but covered in tile glue:

Exposed wood floor with the tiles pulled up.

I soon realized picking the kitchen and the very spot in the kitchen I chose to start was probably a bad thing. The floor was terribly sticky and right in front of the refrigerator. I soon found out that as I walked over it my foot kept going and my flip flips stayed stuck behind.

Oh dear. So I got kinda nervous at John’s arrival.

Well, when John got home, he was surprised, and told me he had been kidding about pulling up the tile.
Too late now. We have committed!

So how to get the glue off. I best not take anymore tiles off until we figure that out. I have read hair dryer, I have read dry ice…but when we went to the Medieval Fayre that past Saturday and talked with a fellow wood craftsman, he suggested just sand it.

So we have explored the hand sander and that proved to take the glue off, but not without a lot of effort.

In the meantime, if we want anything out of the fridge, we have to stand about 3 tiles over, lean forwards, and quickly grab what we need, and get it back in without falling over. 🙂 Fun.

Well just about as much fun as the oven that doesn’t work for me:

John’s oven that doesn’t like me.

and the windows that won’t open.

But they do offer a precious view of the back yard.

He really is a brave man. He doesn’t seemed phased that I have to handle fire to turn on the stove, and with windows that don’t open, he doesn’t seem to worry about my claustrophobia. Brave. 🙂

So the kitchen has been fun, well until yesterday. I went to microwave something, and it smelled like something electrical burning. I ran to the email to tell John while he was at work what was going on. He replied I should unplug it. Well unplugging things in Australia is more than one step. But it does seem to be a nice safety feature. There is a switch on the outlet that allows the current through. Now in the past this nifty feature has given me grief, but this day I was happy to have it as the smell was so bad, I was afraid to touch the 220 v. current anything.

Needless to say, it happened on late night shopping day, and right after work we were out getting a new microwave. He’s a good (and did I say brave) man. 🙂