P*ssed Off

Gotta love pets. Cats especially. I've mentioned before that we have a pair of psychopathic moggies. boB (but we spell it backwards) is a strange aloof critter that never seems at rest. Emma on the other hand is a sad 13 old scrawny lovable thing. Both cats came from a rescue centre where they had spent over a year waiting for adoption.

Somewhere along the way Emma has taken to relieving herself at the front door as well as using her 'facilities'.

Now cat pee especially female cat pee is one of the hardest things to get rid of. Once a cat has decided she is going somewhere she goes there again and again as it smells of previous visits. This is the problem we have at the front door. We cut back the carpet a few months ago along with the underlay with the intention of replacing the front hall with the surplus laminate flooring left over from the computer / office / whatever room.

Carpet gone, pee gone right? Wrong. She's kept on using the front door despite all attempts, cat-b-gone sprays, citronella, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, etc, etc. Now the floorboards have become saturated with it. It didn't help that the boards are 110 years old and by today's standards rough cut.

The only solution has been to rip up the floorboards and start over.

First off out come the old boards. Turns out this was a good idea. Apart from the cat pee they've had 110 years of soggy feet trampling on them. A couple of the boards were pretty rotten and basically split into bits from just trying to lift them by hand.


This is what passes for our basement. Its about 2' deep and full of old bricks, dirt and the skeletal remains of several double glazing salesmen. (OK I made up that last bit) Under the front door is also where everything comes into the house. I had to be very careful as the gas main, electricity, cable, and phone were all just below the floorboards. To add to the complication 3 boards in from the door the return pipe for the hall radiator.

Some of boards didn't want to retire from active duty and had to be sawn through in order to pry them up. The bits of wiring in the picture are extensions of the phone cables. The redundant line has been removed to clean things up a bit.

3 hours later and a lot of Gordon Ramseyesque language and we no longer have a smelly front hallway. One complication is I've had to make a hatch in the flooring to access the main water shut off. What a stupid place to put it.
The joists and other bits below were cleaned off and sprayed with the most foul smelling paint to seal the wood and ensure that all residual traces of pee are long gone. The next step will be to remove the rest of the carpet and put down the underlay and laminate.

Lastly, here is Emma the guilty madam. I just can't stay mad at that poor old thing though. Lets just hope it stops her.

Update:  Emma passed away in her sleep on April 1 2010 aged approx. 13