Trim and Trash

Hello all. One of the essential projects that's easy to overlook is painting all the door and window trim from a drab brown to a bright white. Because we are installing new flooring everywhere we are putting in new baseboards that will also need to be painted. 

What we really like is how much a difference and improvement this makes.

Picking up a theme from before on what happens to your house during renovation, it's hard to overstate the amount of junk that accompanies a project like this. A seemingly simple thing like four dining room chairs and table can fill a room with the detritus.

Luckily, on our third try (including trying a few chairs from our other house) we landed on something we like that goes well with the table we got earlier and have already painted.

We're not there yet by a long shot, but we're making the place more homey with every step.

Until next time.

Bath deux, round un

Hello all. Having made some more progress on floors we turned to other rooms. We enjoyed our first bathroom so much we decided to do it again!

As a refresher, this is what we started with.

So far, so functional. Once we cleared out the existing accoutrements we had more of a clean slate on which to perform our magic.

Our first step was to paint the ceiling and walls, true to our work from the top down approach. You may be wondering why we stopped short on the walls. You're quite perceptive for your age, aren't you? Well our initial design called for bead board to cover the lower half of the wall.

Why change a horse in midstream? Well here is the tile we planned to use for the floor. It's a nice complement to the black/white one we used in the first bathroom.

We really like it and began to wonder whether the bright white bead board would be too much visually and distract from the tile.

You can tell us what you think. We're much happier with our choice.

You're always advised to buy about 10% more flooring than you'll need because there's going to be waste. As we motored along this floor ate up a lot of tile to ensure we could maintain the design. From that initial pile this is what remains.

With the floor and walls done we could install the counter. We'd taken out one 36-inch cabinet and replaced it with 32 inches' worth of cabinets--an 18-inch cabinet flanked by two 9-inch ones. The reason for this contortion? Long delivery delays. Also these were kitchen cabinets (24 inches deep) which meant we had to use our trick of cutting three inches off the back. The notches between the cabinets are to accommodate the sink bowl.

There's still obvious work to be done, but we're back to having a working bathroom, only nicer. 

Until next time.

This Was The Week That Was

Hello all. In honor that old TV show, we made a mad dash to install and finish the floor in the kitchen, which adjoins the living room. Five days straight of quality time in close proximity to the ground. Here's what we had to work with--a stack of unfinished yellow pine boards that had acclimated to the house temperature and humidity:

Way back when we were finishing the bulk of the kitchen, we had a flash of foresight. We didn't want to maneuver the refrigerator or oven on the unfinished floor (deep scratching) and had no place to stash them while we did the floor. What to do? We made a platform for each with the pine and finished them. The darker piece was scrap oak that we screwed temporarily in place to act as a straight edge and as a ramp for moving the appliances when the time came.

Next up we prepared the floor with our standard red rosin paper. In the hallway we laid the 3/16-inch luan boards again to match the height of the kitchen. That odd coil/cord in the middle of the kitchen is electricity for an outlet that had been on the original island and will be again. One difference from the prior rooms is that we needed an air compressor-powered stapler to drive into the linoleum.

With that we were ready to nail the boards in place. We made our lives a little harder by deciding that we didn't want a threshold between the kitchen and hall, but some careful planning on where to place boards and which lengths solved that.

Here's the final floor with its two coats of finish. Contrast that with the living room to the left of the threshold which is still unfinished.

And here's what remains of our initial stack. Good thing we have lots more in the garage for the remaining rooms.

Until next time.

Two (floors) for the show...

Hello all. With one floor under our belts we were ready to tackle another. This would be a step up in size and visibility because we wanted to do the living room.

As before, the first step is to prepare the area. To raise the height of the floor to the level of the kitchen (because it has linoleum), we installed 3/16 inch luan plywood.

Then we swept and vacuumed to make it as clean as possible before putting down our red rosin paper. We also had to jerry rig a way to get our router out of harm's way.

Then we could lay some lumber. The stack you see blocking the far archway is the flooring waiting patiently to be installed. Step...

by step..

by step...

by step...

And then it's done.

Until next time.