649 6th

spring has sprung

For the past few months we've been able to convince ourselves that we couldn't get any more work done in the house as there was no place left to make a mess. You know, too cold to work outside but since all of the rooms have a certain degree of finish we couldn't really stir up a lot of dust...are you buying it?

Until last week I don't think we had done a lick of work on the house since John and Aimee's birthday parties back in December. I guess we earned a bit of a break from the run up to the event, but I think the rest is over. I'm tired of having no bookshelves and no place to put away my clothes. It's time to get busy.

Before we could start anything new however there was one lingering project i sore need of attention; finish the floors. We had only put sanding sealer on the before the party and then never got around to do the finish coats. For a number of reason we went with polyurethane, not my first choice in terms of material but the durability own out in the end. Michael applied it in three thin coats over a two day period at the end of last week, giving the last coat 24 hours to dry sans cats and humans. It doesn't look all that plastic coated and finally it has a little protection.

floor complete

They came to fit and install the hatch door to the basement today. Now the boardwalk totally surrounds the bathroom. I think we may end up cutting a small hole in the hatch to let the cats to the basement to do their thing. It would be a shame not to have closed more often, but I still don't want to share my bathroom with them. A few more gratuitous design shots as well (as always, click to enlarge).

meeting a deadline

 

The project plan date finally arrived; December 1st.  It's been about three years since we started on this project and I think there were at least some out there who doubted we could stay together and make good on our DIY plans.We had the big birthday party last night and I think we finally won over errant skeptics.

We didn't get to everything that was on the plan for December 1. I guess we will never really be done and there will always be details.

I am pleased to announce though, we finally have a working bathroom door. On Friday night we still hadn't installed the hardware. We were putting sand and sealer on the new oak floors until about 2:00am (good thing too they would have been destroyed last night). We couldn't start the barn door hardware until after it had dried. We did our best to control the frustration as the hours ticked into the afternoon on Saturday, but it had been a lot of tasks for a lot of days straight and the last minute details were piling up.

I thought I had purchased the railing not drilled for the anchors. I was going to align the bar with the studs, drill it accordingly, and screw it in with 3/8" lags. When we opened up the railing we noticed it was pre-drilled, five evenly spaced times, by the fine folks at barndoorhardware.com. Of course none of the studs aligned with the holes.

The solution: we took off a couple of rows of cedar, removed the 1/2" drywall the entire length of the wall in a 7" strip, and then replaced it with 1/2" in ply. We screwed the plywood to the studs, replaced the cedar, drilled it, and then used toggle bolts fasten it all together. In the end I think it's a much better installation than what we would have done, and it was pretty easy.

This is obviously not the final door. It's a random piece of ply we cut down to match the size it will be. Again I'm sort of glad we were forced to do a dry run here. The hardware needed a bit of a adjusting before we got it just right. I would always rather work stuff like that out not on the piece you will be using forever. There's always that first time learning curve, I always wish the first shot didn't have to be the only in some the craft jobs we've taken on. It is nice to have the improv'ed luxury this time.

oak flooring

The first piece of the oak boardwalk went in today. I can assuredly now say I have no fear (hind sight of course) about the oak and cedar bickering with each other. I think the tones and grains have enough similarities and differences that they work. Tomorrow they will do the cross walk in the dining room; over to the right in this photo.

They're also slated to lay down the kitchen pieces tomorrow, finally covering the last bit of green marble you can barely see peeking out here. That includes the large step up to the stairs. Very exciting times!

finishing school

applying finish

weekend update

in with the old

bamBOOM

3rd floor is well on its way to habitability. Sheetrock was finished, taped and primed just before Christmas, and the very day we got back from Florida (more on that trip soon) we set an aggressive three-day plan for installing the bamboo floor.

First step: clean up the huge mess! Spare cuts of sheetrock and spackle dust everywhere. Once we could get at the floors we prepped the surface with a double thickness of 15 pound asphalt felt. Even tracked down a couple squeeks and screwed them down to silence.

Next step: install bamboo. We rented a pneumatic floor nailer from Home Depot (the first time they've actually had the item we wanted in stock AND working); an intimidating machine, but surprisingly easy to get the hang of after a couple of test wacks. Left the pre-finished bamboo boards virtually unmarred.

You can't tell in this shot, but we're actually not quite done (with the floor at least). We did get the main field installed so we could return the rental without racking up tons of extra hours. Now we need to install the pieces that the nailer couldn't reach.

Gotta say: looks damn good. Better than I thought it would given the maiden installation. Engineered boards made it a dream. Only needed to use a couple of the flooring installation tricks I read about. Plus a couple monster cups of tea. And two yoga classes. I'll take the motivation wherever I can get it.