Doing Work!

With all of the subfloor down, we have been able to focus all of our energy on laying floor, and FINALLY, this past Monday night, we laid our LAST piece of wood flooring!!!

So, now the living room/kitchen...

Breakfast nook...

And Master Bedroom (just beyond the door)...

are ALL COMPLETELY FILLED WITH WOOD FLOORING!!  YAY!!

With the back two bedrooms done, and the dining room and den laid, we have officially FINISHED laying flooring!!  Now we have to sand, then seal and finish the floors all throughout the house (except the back two bedrooms and hall), so, we definitely have a LOT of work ahead of us, but, the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter and bigger each day!  We are clearing out the space this week, and this Friday afternoon, sanding begins...

The Grind

A bit of a back story...

Before we could finish all the subfloor, we had to deal with our lovely master bedroom...

When we took up the carpet and padding, we immediately noticed three fairly large cracks in our slab.  Because the house has settled over the years, these lovely little cracks made the floor less than level, which turns out to be quite a problem when laying wood floors.

So, off to Home Depot Tool Rental we went, and Zach spent a few hours grinding down the high spots, which turns out to be quite messy...

Editor's Note:  It is a little hard to tell what is going on in the picture below, but it is dust/concrete blowing out of our master bedroom, thanks to the street light right next to our home, you could see the dust rising from down the road...

Here's Zach with the concrete grinder, you can see that the bedroom door is closed, it literally turned the room into a disaster area, thank goodness for shop vacs....

Making Progress

With all the subfloor DONE! we are completely, 100% focused on getting the rest of the floor nailed down. 

First, we had to come take the flooring around our "half wall" that separates our dining room and kitchen/living room.  Here are the two areas...

Editor's Note:  Zach is measuring/praying that we are lining up on both sides...

And, its a miracle, we did meet!! So, we successfully floored our way into our living room and kitchen...and here's what we've been up to since...

Working around the island and bar area...

Editor's Note:  Yes, that is our dishwasher in the middle of our living room...don't worry, its not staying there...hopefully its moving out for good, as we have a replacement coming since that one no longer fits with the added 1 1/2" of flooring...

Living in the Between

Ever since we tore up our living space (kitchen, master bedroom, living room), we have been camping out in our two spare bedrooms.

One is set up as our bedroom...

With our essentials in the closet (everything else is still in our MB closet)...

And our new living room...

Our linen closet currently is home to all the little things from the kitchen and living room and other random places that we don't want covered in dust...

                                              

And just beyond the barrier/plastic sheet...

                                           

is our current kitchen...

                                     

Can you tell that this area is still "unfinished"?  Please excuse the thin layer of dust on EVERYTHING, the random vacuums and oven, eventually this will be our den again...

Hopefully sooner rather than later....  ;)

More Subfloor (and an Easter Break!!)...

We are officially DONE with demo!!  We now have a LOT of subfloor to put down before we can move onto actually laying some hardwood...

We started on some of this subfloor before we left for the cruise, 

worked on it for a week when we returned (including these fun and challenging pieces)...

And then, we took a short break and went up to Northern AZ for Easter!!  We had a blast decorating eggs (Zach's parents are showing off their masterpieces below)...

eating WONDERFUL food and making and drinking margaritas (made with fresh squeezed lime juice)...

And most importantly, celebrating Easter with our family!!  It was so wonderful to be with everyone!!

But, again, we returned home and quickly reality set in and we were back to work.  And, this weekend, we FINALLY finished putting down all of the subfloor! YAY!! 

Here is Zach putting in the LAST piece...

And a little celebration...

Adios concrete nail gun, thank you for all your hard work,

but I feel confidant saying you will not be missed. =)

Back in Action

We had GREAT time on the our carribean cruise, we managed to successfully forget about this entire flooring project, and the work that awaited us upon our return home.  But, come Sunday night, reality struck, we were back home...

As you saw, before we left, we had finished laying a great deal of flooring in the den and dining room.  With the den and dining room close to finished, we needed to move on into our family room, kitchen and master bedroom. 

To remove the carpet and tile in the rest of the home, we redesigned our Master Bathroom so it now resembles our old Den...

Our new linen closet, it closely resembles our old bathtub...

After some "rearranging", we moved ourselves into the now FINISHED back wing, and started the demo work in the rest of the home.  Here is a shot of our cabinets ready for tile demo...

We have taped all of the cabinets so that dust doesn't get in them when we tear up the tile and thin set.  And, yes, that is tape over our sink, we needed to remind ourselves NOT to use the sink since after removing the dishwasher we had a "gushing water" problem when the water was running (after a mere FOUR trips to Home Depot, we found the right size cap to fix this issue)...

Finally, we were ready to go, appliances in the corner covered (don't worry, the fridge is still plugged in), cabinets taped, tile coming up!

After a few hours of taking up tile, scraping off thin set, and then loading and unloading said items at the dump, we celebrated/drowned our sorrows...

It's time to get serious, we no longer have a kitchen...

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming

I have to apologize for our lapse in posts...we haven't been blogging, because we haven't been working, because we've been catching some rays...

and drinking some tasty frozen drinks...

and eating some tasty seafood treats...

with all these crazies...

thanks so much Grandma and Grandpa, we all had a blast on the 2010 Wehmeyer Family Cruise!!!

(LOTS) more flooring to come...

Getting Faster

Now with two rooms behind us, we felt energized to start on the den and dining room, which had been waiting for a few weeks.  Sunday night, we put in our first row the entire length of the room, over 47 feet!

By quitting time Sunday, we backfilled all the lovely little areas in between the columns, and we were ready to start on some long runs Monday...

After Monday night...

Zach busy working Tuesday night...

And, here is our progress after Wednesday night's work.  You can see how we are getting close to the wall and had to move the wood, AGAIN!

 

With the dining room and den almost completely laid out, it is about time for Zach and I move.  We are headed to the back wing of the house while we demo our family room, kitchen and master bedroom, hopefully soon!

In Our Free Time

While working on the back two bedrooms, we hit a couple of unplanned snags.  The weekend we were planning to start laying the floors, we found out Friday evening that we couldn't just buy the nails we needed at Home Depot.  We needed 1 1/2" nails, and Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, pretty much any store you can think of had 1" and 2" nails, but NO 1 1/2".  Then, we were planning on sanding the floors over a weekend, but didn't quite feel ready, we wanted to finish a few small details, so decided to postpone.

These weekends were spent turning this...

into this...

First, we did some serious demo.  We spent a weekend taking up tile, and then the thin set beneath the tile...

The next free weekend, we went to work putting down the subfloor...Here's a shot of all of the plywood nailed down, a good day's work...

Next, we rolled out the tar paper, brought in some wood to acclimate, and let everything sit for a few weeks, while we focused on finishing the back two bedrooms.  But, we returned to this room Sunday...

Two Rooms and A Hallway - Done and Done

Last Sunday, we OFFICIALLY finished our back two bedrooms and hallway. 

Kevin came down Saturday to help...they had LOTS of fun :)

One of FOUR coats of finish waiting to be spread...

And, after one coat of shellac, four coats of finish, and lots of buffing in between, we are DONE!!!

We really couldn't be happier with how it turned out, and, finishing this area gave us the boost we needed to get going on the rest of the house.

The FINISHED product!