More Floor

Not in the house guys!

It's not often that you open your front door and find someone raking cement.

The tar paper gets cut off right at cement level.  The camera didn't pick it up, but you could see the cement steaming.

Ted with the drum sander, a very loud and obnoxious tool if there ever was one.

Ted stained the entryway first.  It looked pretty good, but we ended up putting a second coat of an ebony stain on the darker rings to get them to stand out more.

I got to help wipe the stain, but as you can see Ted's hands were a little messy to take any pictures of me working, but work I assure you I did.

There's something magical about stain, I'm really glad I got these pictures of it being applied. You can really see the wood coming to life.

This was done late the night before so the stain has had plenty of time to dry.  It's lost some of it's sheen, but will be getting it back with the finish.

An around the corner shot as we were walking out the door.  It's a beautiful floor, I think it's really cool how different it can look depending on how the light is hitting it.

Floor floor floor

The finished entryway.  We're going to try staining the outside rings a darker color, should make for a nice effect if we can pull it off.

The living room completely installed.

The master closet with crawlspace access.

Ted is working on the lids for our storage space in the bay window bench.

The top of the bench.  This is all Ted's design.

Here's Limei patching cracks in the wood flooring.

The living room floor after we did all of the patching.  What happened to our beautiful floor?  It's all good, it gets sanded down quite a bit.  Tomorrow is Presidents' Day, so Ted is on babysitting duty.  By the end of the week though we should have a finished floor.

More Excitement

We had some windy days this past weekend.  Here's Limei strategically placing a rock to hold down the insulation over where our driveway slab will be.  They have a ground heater to thaw the ground so that they can pour the driveway and front porch cement tomorrow.

Limei was essential to getting the tile grout done, she almost worked as hard as my Dad did putting it in.  This is the entryway.

Yes, that is a masking tape belt.  Limei didn't have an old coat to wear while caulking this past weekend.

I went high, she went low.  Got a lot of work done.

Sometimes she went high too.  It wasn't bad at all while we were on the sunny side of the house, but once we got around to the north things got a little chilly.

Roofers, should be finished shingling tomorrow.

They got this whole side done in less than a day.

Some of Ted's handiwork.  Pretty amazing, huh?

Our living room will look something like this.

Tile Edition (with an Oak Floor preview)

Here's the tile in what we call the second bathroom, really nice stuff I found on Craigslist.

My Dad playing with his new toy, the wet saw.  It's the only thing that made this project manageable. 

Even Limei got in on the action.  In the background is the master shower, the purple stuff is a paint on vapor barrier.

While we were tiling the shingles arrived.

Thinset mortar on the last section of the master shower.

My Dad laying what could very well be the last tile in the shower.  It was a huge relief to have this portion done.  At 70 square feet it was one of the larger areas we did, and the fact that we were tiling walls didn't make it any easier.

The start of the master bath floor, I think it was about midnight when I took this.  We put in some long hours (especially my Dad) and late nights the entire past week.

The corner shelves and soap dish all went in the next day.  They seemed to be in there pretty good but the wood support beams helped set the proper angle so water would run off.

The master bath.  We had just enough 6 inch dark tiles to put a row in at the end, eliminating a fair amount of cutting and saving us from having to open another case. Overall the tiling was a huge project and a ton of work that I never would have been able to do without the help of my Dad.  Thanks Dad, you're the best!

Phew, glad that tile is done.  Now we can start hauling in 7 foot long bundles of red oak flooring :)

Ted, my friend and the flooring guy looking like his normal cheerful self.

This shot gives a nice perspective of the pile that we hauled in today.  1400 square feet total.  I was impressed with the overall quality of the wood.  It's a #2 Common Red Oak, which means that there can be some knots, bad boards, and color variation but it's a lot better than I had expected.  A lot of it looked like really good high quality stuff, and the knots just add character ;)

Funny angle, I know, but I love how the light was hitting it from this angle.  Hopefully it will look something like that after it is installed.