down it goes
much has happened and we're finally heading in the positive direction on the flooring project! Thursday we finished removing nails, did final cleaning, and began sh
ellacing (got a coat on the sunroom and about 3/4 of the living room). we think we were only slightly buzzed after the shellacing. the shellac (which i have learned is a very interesting natural product) is made soluable using denatured alcohol ... thus when it dries, much alcohol is vaporized. after a time, you get really sick (to the stomach) of the smell. it dries pretty quick though, so it's not bad once you get it down. the floors were really porous, so it went on at about twice the normal rate (thus i had to go buy more). Friday night we finished shallacing the downstairs (2 coats) and made final preparations for Saturday. the shellacing really darkened the floors ... as you can see in this picture.Saturday morning, my uncle Wil and cousin Matt drove down to help
begin laying the hardwood floor. after some planning, measuring and more planning ... we had most of the building paper down and the wood began to fly. Matt borrowed/rented two manual floor nailers from his neighbor. i had never used one before, but had heard they take quite a hit from the mallet to set the nail. this is true, you really need to wail on that sucker to make it work right. it took me a while to get the hang of it ... and still would have a few that needed setting from time to time. once you get a feel for it though, it's really not all that bad.we worked until around 7 that night. we got about 160 S
F put down. while the quantity isn't huge, it was some of the more difficult areas to get put down. getting things all planned out so that the floor was continuous through the living and dining rooms was tricky (but successful). we (well, mainly Wil and Matt) got the sunroom started also. this included another tricky transition ... as i wanted to turn the flooring the other direction and not use any molding to cover the transition. the result was great, it's going to be a seamless merger between the floors. most of the remainder of the downstairs will be really fairly simple. there are few things to go around and the initial layout is done. starting the
upstairs hallway and the kitchen still need to be done, but we discussed some strategy before the experts left. i'm planning on buying a manual floor nailer Monday to keep moving. it's going to take a while, but i think Chrissy and i can move along at a good clip ... she was pretty excited to learn how to use the miter saw. i can't thank Wil and Matt enough for helping get things started and teaching me how to finish the rest. thanks for giving up your saturday to help guys.so far, we are really really pleased with the results. the cheap oak is really looking great (our opinion i guess). there is a really nice mix of lengths (a lot more long pieces than i expected), colors, and textures ... character (which we like ... you may not). we bought 20% extra to account for some of the rougher pieces and waste ... thus far i think we're well under that. there was one bundle where about 75% of it was pretty much unusable due to a lot of splitting ... usually there are only one or two bad pieces (to much "character") though. most can at least be salvaged as a row starting/ending piece.
meanwhile, Saturday afternoon Chrissy prep-ed the upstairs bathroom and got it painted! the darker blue turned out great. she also cleaned it up as it was covered with the remnants of the electric project. we just need to do a little patching around the new outlet and some touch up of the lower area and the room is pretty much done for now. well, we will probably put new lights in too i guess, but that won't take long.
sunday we were out of town ... having a family Thanksgiving at, strangely enough, Wil's house. we had a great time hanging out with the fam. i'm not sure if i'll post again soon. we'll be working Mon and Tues nights, but be out of town Weds evening - Sat morning. we hope to get a bunch of hardwood down next weekend, so i'll probably update then. have a great Thanksgiving everyone!
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 11:45 PM
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