We have flooring. Yes, flooring.

Oh, you know the end is officially in sight when you can stand up (almost straight) and say (with a grimace), "Wow. That looks like a real floor."

And then go take a fistful of ibuprofen and lie down for a while.

Yes, we have a bathroom floor. Much like the floor in the upstairs bathroom, I can take full credit for this one as I did pretty much the whole thing myself. The War Department had a few too many beers on Friday night, if you must know, and wasn't up to helping much. Well, to be honest, that's only a half-truth; yes, she had too many beers on Friday night, but we had already decided that this particular job was probably best left to a me, given that only one person would be able to work in the bathroom at a time, and I was reasonably confident in my ability to do the floor myself.

The first part of the task on Saturday morning was to set up a little workstation for myself in the office so I wouldn't have to keep trudging back into the workshop every time I needed to trim down one of the planks:



Of course, the planks were far too wide to be cut on the chop saw (I used it exactly twice), so I wound up using the table saw almost exclusively -- except for those times I had to go trudging back to the workshop so I could clamp a piece down to the workbench and have a go at it with the jigsaw.

Then, as per the instructions, I opened all of the bundles of flooring so I could pick and choose pieces at random and not wind up with a weird pattern in the floor:



Which... I kinda did anyway, so ... well, whatever...

Anyway, the next step was a false start. See, the instructions (yes, I read them and no, they weren't singularly uninformative. I found them to be of tremendous use. Mostly to cushion the bottom of the floor tool so I wouldn't mark the cork when I was hammering away on it trying to get the boards to close up that last 32nd of an inch, but I digress) say to make sure that none of the pieces of flooring are cut to less than 4 inches wide. Given the weird shape of the bathroom, this was actually much more frustrating to work out than you'd think. Remember that I'm not very good at math, and then take a peek at the worksheet I used to figure out how wide the first strip of flooring needed to be:



(The reason there are two worksheets is because I worked out all of my calculations on the first worksheet (the one on the left) based on the floor planks being 7 and three-eighths of an inch wide. The right-hand worksheet is the one I made up after I remembered that the planks are actually 7 and FIVE-eighths of an inch wide. Measure twice, cut once, grasshopper -- but it's probably okay if you spend twenty minutes working up a plan based on the faulty first measurement. Sure. No one's in a hurry here or anything.)

Working from the correct calculations, I cut the first piece of floor to exactly four inches, got the first row hammered together somehow, and then started work on the second:



AND... that's about where I stopped for a break because I realized that I really should have borrowed Clamb's floor tool because I had to go off to the damn store and buy one.

But with the new tool proving to be something of a valuable asset, I managed to get into the groove a little bit and was pleased when my measuring turned out to be pretty dead on, at least at the first odd corner:



Then the second corner went in all right, even though it had a tricky angle on it, and I realized I hadn't even sworn at anything since I put in the third row or so. Woot! Now I was cooking with gas!



(And where, you may ask, was Amy during all this work on the floor? Well, she did come to the store with me to pick up the little flooring tool on Saturday, but then she went right back to what she was doing before we went out:



Ah, must be rough, eh?)

Anyway, it took me pretty much the whole day, but I got it done. Here's a shot of where I called it a day:



Yeah, that last piece wasn't actually hammered home yet, but it was proving rather finicky, I was starving, my back hurt, I had to clean up and make dinner, and I just couldn't deal with the nasty little bugger. As it turned out, I pulled up three rows this morning anyway so I could fix the second of the two corners at the shower because I'd munged up the cork pretty badly trying to get the pieces to lock together, but it all went back in with no problems, and it's officially finished.

(Oh, and my measuring job with the worksheets and whatnot? I was off by less than a quarter-inch. Not too shabby, especially for me!)

If you're wondering where the hole for the toilet went, I used the router to cut it out this afternoon. Which, of course, required another trip to Canadian Tire because, for some reason, among ALL the bits Amy had for her router, she didn't have a flush-trimming bit. Go figure.

Of course, you can't see the end result because we had to cover it up with cardboard in preparation for the return of the electricians, who are coming in tomorrow to finish wiring the outlets and putting in these babies:



Yes, they install cardboard boxes. Why not?
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Painting's done!

No, really. We finished painting and I have the pictures to prove it.

Actually, we finished painting last Monday, but I haven't got around to making a post because, well, we've been busy with other things. Like, oh, for instance, buying this:



Pretty sweet little sled, I gotta say.

Anyway, you don't come here to look at pictures of cars (and if you do, your Google skills need some serious work), so let's get to the basement portion of our program, shall we?


So, first up, the folks at Cloverdale paint worked their magic and color-matched the upstairs wall quite nicely (which is good because I really didn't want to have to paint the whole damn living room):



We painted the office a lovely color called "Dorset Cream" by Farrow & Ball:



And no, we didn't pay for Farrow & Ball paint. We're not made of money. But it's such a beautiful color, and the paint at Cloverdale is really nice stuff, so we're pretty happy with the end result.



For the bathroom, we picked a color called "Silver Sage" by Restoration Hardware. It's not easy to see in the photos, but it's a really nice shade of grey, with green, blue, and brown tones:



And, of course, we painted the laundry room, too, but that's just white and boring. Kinda like all the pictures I took of the office and bathroom after we primed them. A complete waste of time. No, really. Have you ever tried taking a picture of an entirely white room? It's almost as frustrating as painting on a second coat of white paint.

So, next up, flooring! The cork planks for the bathroom are currently sitting in the office, "acclimating" to the room... Oooooh, sexy!

Oh, and the electricians should be coming by at some point this week (I hope) to finish up the last bits of their part. Which means we should have actual LIGHT with which to work! Joy!
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Okay, so NOW we're back.

All right, all right. You can all just pipe the hell down now - here's your stinking update.

Despite the lack of bloggage lately, we have been making progress. Well, okay, WE haven't been making much progress, but our drywall guy's a freakin' machine. If only the damn mud didn't have to dry between coats...

So, the last post of any substance involved clearing out the scrap drywall and doing a little prep work for Tony the Drywall Guy. Well, needless to say, between the time we originally contacted him (before we went to Australia) and the time we called him back to start the job, he'd forgotten who we were and where we lived. Fortunately, he was still willing to do the work.

And wow, what great work this guy does! Here's a little "time lapse" slide show of the past four weeks:

Round One:





Including all his prep time, that took him about five hours. We would have considered ourselves lucky to do that much in five WEEKS.

Round Two:





All that took him about three-and-a-half hours. Yeah. He showed up at 4:30 and he was gone by 7:00. No shit.

Round Three:





That was about another three-and-a-half hours. And that was it. He was finished the job. Oh, of course, he also mudded up the big piece we put in the upstairs hallway:



And, thanks to him, we didn't have to worry about overlapping the drywall and the shower edge, or using a ridiculous amount of caulking.

Before:


After the first coat:


I'd tell you what we paid him, but you wouldn't believe me. Hell, I still hardly believe it. Seriously, he was that cheap. Hell, I would gladly have paid him FOUR TIMES what the final bill was, just to avoid having to do all that ourselves. And there's no way we could have done anywhere near as nice a job. Anyone need a mudder? Cause we know the best one in town, no fooling.

Of course, now that he's officially done, we no longer have any excuse to avoid getting back to work. And after drywall, the next step is...

Well, see for yourself:



We spent the long weekend working our way through that five-gallon bucket of drywall sealer/primer. Yeah. Five gallons of it.

Two coats.

On everything.




Good times, good times.
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Pictures!

No, not of the basement. All I did this weekend was put in about 20 or so Tapcons, and I'll be damned if I'm taking a picture of that.

I'm talking Australia pics! Woo!


Get 'em while they're hot.

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We're baaaaack....

Well, we're back from Australia and about as fresh and functional as can be expected after eight planes, two rental cars, a 24-hour train ride, and a grand total of about 31,824.6 kilometers (roughly) traveled. (Not including the ride to the airport and back, of course.)

Which is to say, not much.

We didn't have a great deal of energy or wherewithal to get cracking this past weekend, having arrived home after that last, brutal flight on Monday morning, but we did manage to get something done.

Two trips to the local recycling/drop-off yard later, we've cleared out the basement of all that drywall scrap, and taken most of the bags of trash to boot:





It was a pretty good use of a Saturday, I suppose, but I couldn't help thinking of what I was doing LAST Saturday...



Mmmm.... flies.

If you want more pictures of our trip, hang tight: we'll be uploading them soon enough.

We'll be back with regular updates as soon as the jet lag wears off. I reckon that'll be about .... oh, August.
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Drywall's done, and we're outta here!

The last thing I wanted to be thinking about while we're traveling was the last bits of drywall that still needed to be done. (Could I have made the tenses in that sentence a little more awkward, you think?) So while the War Department was preparing the house and our housesitter for our absence, I went downstairs and put on the old Carhartts one more time, just for fun.

I'm happy to report that the drywall is officially finished. Well, it's finished being installed, anyway. We still have to get Tony in to work his magic with the mud and whatnot.

Anyway, there were only four pieces left, most of which were small and boring, so there isn't much in the way of interesting pictures for this post. Just so you know...


The piece that required the most work to finish was the last bit of the bulkhead in the laundry room. I had to install a complicated little nailing edge to protect the wires and still leave room for various cables and whatnot.



Looks pretty snazzy, I think. If you're wondering how we plan to tie in that bulkhead to the existing wall and finish off the wall by the stairs, well, so are we.

I also installed the little piece of drywall over the door to the workshop, and the big piece on the workshop side of the entrance. Neither of which makes for a good picture (or any picture at all, really) so let's just move on.

The other complicated task was to finally get the cable lines all squared away inside the electrical cabinet, and put the last piece of drywall over the bulkhead beside it.



That's a whole mess of cables there, but there's not a whole lot more we can do about it.

And just in case you thought I was kidding about the amount of scrap generated by an off-size basement ceiling:




So, yeah. That's the state of the basement at the moment. We're off for two weeks to see my big brother get married in Tasmania. (Awesome! A 15-hour plane ride! Joy!) When we get back, it'll be all systems go to get the drywall covered up, the doors installed, the carpet laid, and the trim put in.

It's gonna look nice. Really.

See you when we get back. Read more...

Another weekend, another piece of drywall

Yes, that's right. We managed ONE piece of drywall this past weekend. But to be fair, it was a REALLY tough piece.

Remember this?



Yes, that really was ... uh ... god, I suck at math ... um, close to EIGHT months ago. Yeah. Anyway, if you don't recall, that's the hole we had to cut in the drywall (plaster, actually - more on that in a bit) so the plumber could run the vent stack for the new bathroom up the wall, through the attic, and out the roof.

Well, we wanted to make sure we had a goodly amount of time in which to tackle drywalling over that particular hole, so we waited until this weekend. And it's a good thing we did.

Saturday started with a trip to, of course, Home Despot, where we picked up a couple of 2x2s and a few steel brackets. We need these to create nailing edges for the drywall to screw into. (As a general aside, anytime you have to make an extra trip to the hardware store to pick up material just to make sure you have something to drive screws into, you're in for a long day.)

Once we got home, it was time to move all the stuff out of the front hall, and hang a sheet of plastic across the entrance to make sure the dust didn't coat the entire living room. We - okay, the War Department - initially thought the dust wouldn't be too bad, given that it was plaster we were dealing with and not the dust factory that is drywall, but within about thirty seconds of starting to work, I knew we'd need a dust barrier.

The first step was to even off the sides of the plaster with the existing studs inside the wall. We hadn't been too fine with this when we first cut the hole as we were more concerned with just opening up the wall for the plumber. Of course, now that there was a pipe running up the right side of the wall, this was a little more difficult that it would have been if we'd just cut it better the first time. But, armed with a drywall saw, a sharp utility knife, and the godsend of a woodworker's rasp, I managed to trim both side edges flush with the studs. Of course, I managed to hurt myself (that's right, the Injury Report makes a triumphant return this post!) and cover myself with a thick layer of plaster dust in the process, but if nothing else, home renovations are sacrifice personified (that's deep, I think I'll get it put on a T-shirt or something).

Anyway, with the plaster trimmed back, it was time to install the nailing edges. Of course, this wasn't quite as easy as just lining up the 2x2 with the edge of the existing studs - oh no. You see, the plaster on the walls averages 3/4 of an inch thick, whereas the drywall is a 1/2-inch. Yes, I said it averages. To get the spacing right, I had to use a piece of scrap drywall (fortunately, we had enough lying around) fastened to a piece of scrap 2x2 to draw a mark on the parts of the wall that weren't blocked by the vent pipe.

To get around the vent pipe, I had to use a piece of half-inch plywood fastened to three brackets that would fit just behind the pipe - but not too far, or I wouldn't be able to drive in the screws. Needless to say, all this took some time.

Sigh.

I really wish I'd taken a picture, but by the time I got the nailing edges installed and the piece of drywall cut to fit (only took three trips up and down the stairs to do it - it wasn't exactly a square piece, even with the plaster trimmed back), I was covered in dust, tired, hot, and somewhat unwilling to take the drywall out of the hole just so I could go and get my camera.

So, no work-in-progress shots I'm afraid, but I do have one of the finished project:



So yeah. That's a weekend's worth of work right there. Oh, and of course, it's time for another edition of

The Injury Report

The plaster on our walls is made of concrete - or something very close to it. At any rate, it's very sharp.

I scraped my right pinkie finger on some protruding plaster inside the wall while I was trimming the sides of the hole. It bled somewhat, but not too badly.

While trying not to touch the injured part of my pinkie to the plaster on the back of the wall, I scraped the cuticle of my right index finger across what proved to be an exceptionally sharp part of the plaster I was attempting to trim. It didn't bleed as much, but hurt much, much more.

Anyway, I hope to get one more post in before our travel-imposed hiatus next weekend. But if not, well... see you in April.


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