Lots of progress

The flooring that we had delivered last weekend had to "acclimate" to the house conditions (a Very Important Step, according to the floor guys) for about 5 days, so I spent last week getting our practice area (the sun room/lounge) ready to begin laying the floor.

Step 1: remove the popcorn ceiling

 

It took 2 large spray bottles of water and a scraper. The stuff started coming down in sheets. This actually went a lot smoother and faster than I anticipated. And cleanup was the same - fast and easy. I don't get to say that much, so woo hoo!

 

All clean!

Step 2: remove the cheapo baseboards

 

Note the strange concrete curb at the bottom of the wall with the windows. This room used to be the 3rd bay of a 3 car garage, so I think the concrete is a remnant of that construction. It just never got covered. I hadn't been sure what I was going to do with it - paint over it? or cover it? - but I finally came up with an idea. I'm going to cover that entire wall with shiplap. It will hide the ugly stuff and make it look finished.

Step 3: paint

No time to paint shop, so I used the color with the most left. Sherwin Williams Sea Salt, which is also in the kitchen and bathrooms.

Step 4: GO TO HOME DEPOT. Because that's what you do. Every single day.

It's amazing to me what I can fit into my little car with the seats folded down.

Last year when I was obsessed with making furniture, I purchased a drill and circular saw from HD. I bought into the Ryobi tool family with the lovely lime green color. Since then, our tool family has grown bit by bit. Now we have a wet saw, a collection of accessories and batteries, and now a brand new nail gun. Welcome to the family!

 

Somehow I failed to get photos of the baseboard installation. I think I was too excited about using my new nail gun.

This finished the room and it was ready for flooring, so on to step 5: lay the flooring.

I have to mention that we didn't just start laying the flooring. We started by going out to the little shop in the back of the property and spending an hour trying to move a saw table up to the house to put in the garage. In the rain. We started by trying to just roll it out on its dinky little wheels. But this property is full of rocks and trees and other obstacles that made it impossible. So then we got my husband's toy hand cart. We quickly found that it's no easy feat to find a location to actually lift the object with the hand cart. It is a very irregular shape on all sides. In the end we partly disassembled it and finally got it on the cart that way. Over the rocks, over the bridge, through the bamboo, through the fence, and we finally made it to the garage! Time elapsed: 1 hour and some change.

Now we can lay the floor.

 

Sometimes you don't make the cuts just right and the end and you have to remove large parts of consecutive rows to fix it.

Back on track.

 

 

The floors get dirty quickly when you're tracking through construction dust all the time. I ordered some hardwood cleaning supplies, so when they arrive I'll take them over and shine it up.

We moved on to the laundry room. It's small and has a lot of cuts and 2 closets, so it was a skill level up. Ok maybe it was 2 or 3 skill levels up. I don't have a good after pic, but here's the closest one.

We started the kitchen and realized that our approach to door frames/jambs was wrong. So another trip to HOME DEPOT and my husband had a new toy tool. I thought we were finished for the evening (and we had stopped by HD on the way home) but we had to go right back to the UF and try out the new multitool for cutting the bottoms of door jambs.

Here's where we stopped last night around 10pm:

Our handyman has agreed to come out on Thursday and start the master bathroom, so we may just be about to find the light at the end of this tunnel!