Project #1 (our work): Done -- Project #3: Almost done
well, much has happened since the last real update. most of it involved painting and laying floor. we worked really late Tues, Weds and Thurs night. i finished trimming
out t
he end rows of the living and dining rooms, and created the transition into the kitchen. by Thurs night, the difficult portion of the kitchen was done (transition and starting rows) and i was a few feet into the main field. Chrissy moved steadily through the painting and had the living room primed and painted up to the stairs (we think the colors are turning out great). Friday night was my company Christmas party so we got the night off. we had a great dinner and saw a wonderful performance of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". it was another late night though, so no extra sleep to be had.Saturday, we spent the first part of the morning at Sears buying all our appliances (special morning sale). they'll be delivered this coming Sunday. then straight to the house for more work. my dad came down yet again to make some progress on the few remaining electrical items. he relocated an outlet for the fridge in the kitchen (into the wall instead of a surface mount). then the major project was the mudroom. he ran new power for an existing outlet plus one new one for the washer/dryer. he also put a new outlet in the bathroom and put up the new light we bought. he rewired the mudroom light (put up a new one) and made it a 3-way switch so we can turn it on at the back door also. he also spent considerable time sitting on top of the shower (yes, on top of the shower and i'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of that) cleaning up the awful mess that is the old wiring. basically, much of the wiring before came out of the old electrical panel as modern wiring (very deceptive by the previous owners if you ask us ... the appearances of modern wiring when in fact 95% of the house used some knob-and-tube wiring still). the modern wire ended for several circuits above the shower where they simply tied into old knob-and-tube wiring. we had previously gotten everything off the old wiring circuits, but he was able to clean things up and utilize the existing modern wire portions for our new mudroom circuits. very tricky he is. again, my theory of the addition (mudroom & bathroom) being horidly constructed holds true. my list of prime examples grows with every project - just ask me sometime and i'll be happy to rant about it for you. so, the electric stuff is pretty much done except for the sunroom light and installing some undercounter lights in the kitchen (plus putting on switch covers and hanging a light or two ... small things). that's very good.
meanwhile, Chrissy worked on the final coat of paint in the bedroom and some misc. touch-ups. her parents stopped in on their way home from Florida so she
was able to spend some time with them and show them the progress which was nice. her dad also helped me with a few flooring tasks. i spent all day working on finishing up the kitchen and getting started on the upstairs hallway. the kitchen only went so-so, as i started having issues with the floor nailer. more on that later. i was fortunate to have help from my friends Chad and Brad in getting the upstairs landings prepped. they did the annoying task of getting the door frames cut down and getting the floor ready for the new hardwood. later, Brad and Sara (his wife) managed to get knots/chips/gaps
in the hardwood filled in the entire living room. big help! we worked until around 11:30 or so.then there was Sunday. Sunday didn't go so smooth for me -- everything took 3x longer than it should. Chrissy painted the sunroom and did some touchups. she also did wood filling in the dining room, kitchen, sunroom and hallway. i spent the day battling the stupid floor nailer among other things. the ratcheting mechanism is messed. due to the hallway layout, it was tough to always get a good solid hit on the nailer. normally, the ratcheting device would allow you to just hit it again to drive it home. not so anymore it seems. instead, any slight little mis-hit would end up requiring setting the nail -- which can be a really time consuming process with those flooring nails. also, i was battling some out-of-squareness of the walls, resulting in
some gaps i wasn't so happy with. all in all, not going smoothly. Chrissy finished with everything else and came up to help me. slowly, but surely we got it finished (right about midnight - would have been about 5 a.m. had we not had that help on Saturday) including holes filled and a quick vacuuming. this included a scary moment of me hitting my wrist with the hammer really hard. not pleasant. one pleasant thing about Sunday (besides getting the floors done and the Colts winning), we bought what we'll call my Christmas present for this year ... a cordless drill! i needed one for installing the nosing piece at the top of the stairs, so it was a good time to make the investment. i'll do a little blogging about what i got later on. i'm quite pumped.as you could expect, we were extremely exhausted today (and i hurt just about everywhere ... either from injury or just plain soreness) but i met the guys from Griffith Hardwoods this morning to start them on the finishing. same good guys from before. they were very complimentary of the results, which made me feel good. we both stopped in tonight to check on the progress and were very excited about the results! they had it all sanded and stained like they thought they would! it turned out great (sorry, didn't have the camera along for pictures)! they will put a coat of poly on tomorrow and Weds ... and it's done! it's going to be so exciting to see the final results of such a long and oftentimes painful project. NOT including the first day of work with my uncle and cousin ... i used roughly 6500 flooring nails and roughly 1200 finish nails. way more than you would normally expect, but so often you needed to use a lot to get the warping out of the boards ... or you'd have misfires to re-do. no wonder my hand was hurting so much ... that is a lot of impacts of a 2.5 lb. mallet hitting the nailer. it was a good experience though and it will be rewarding to look back over the years and see the results of the hard work. thank you so much to all of you that helped.
tonight we "relaxed". we got a lot of the upstairs stuff packed and i caught up on a ton of bills. tomorrow, more of the same ... get packed up. Friday we have someone coming out to re-lay the carpeting in the bedrooms. Saturday ... we move! holy crap Batman. can that day really be that close? are we really actually going to live there?
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 11:25 PM
3 Comments:
Aren't deadlines great! I'm looking forward to new pictures after the floor guys do their work. The paint looks great too.
FYI - We used approximately 1,500 floor nails on day 1.
I am so happy you are about ready to move in!! Looks great!
I love you guys....
mam
I am so impressed with all of your work. Judging by the pictures it is totally worth it. You guys will have a house to be justifiably proud of.
Deb
P.S. Still jealous that you have a free electrician.
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