More floors

Wednesday - All the wood flooring is laid and ready to finish. 

We have floors everywhere including inside our walk in closet. 

Friday - Minor setback: I received a tragic text while away for the week; a bleach bottle "exploded" on our new floors. I find it a little hard to believe that in a 60 degree room, a bottle of bleach spontaneously popped, but that was how it was presented to me. Regardless, whether it was an explosion or a pneumatic nail, there is a pile of sawdust on the spill and several extra hours of work. Oh well, nothing new. I am currently fighting the Expediter so a little bleach spill is small potatoes. 

Tuesday - Sanding has commenced upstairs and is finishing up in our unit tonight! Bye bye bleach spot! We love our floor installer. He is working hard tonight to finish all the sanding so that he can put our first coat of sealer down tomorrow! No stain for us, we're keeping it light and natural. 

Tuesday UPDATE - Whoa. First coat is going down tonight!! 8:30pm and he's still rocking!

Next Week - Build and install kitchen cabinets and then source our counter top. I can hardly wait. I got the building itch and already put together our bathroom linen cabinet. I just can't wait! Hopefully I will be an Ikea box building machine this weekend. Until then...

Flooring progress and 1st floor work

Busy, busy bees have been at work this past week. The flooring installers have made some major progress. It has been exciting for it to all come together and see how it changes day to day.

Day 1 - 2nd Floor Apartment livingroom, first pieces

2nd Floor Apartment progress looking from bedroom into living room

2nd Floor Apartment - living room installed

2nd Floor Apartment - bedroom finished

I experienced how much quieter it is underfoot while switching off all the lights upstairs after the craftsmen went home. I hadn't even thought about "quieter floors" as a perk! It is logical of course as a new secure layer has been installed on to what was a single layer of gaped flooring. We never had a squeaking issue per say, but it was a bit like my joints after a long run, softly creaky. But no more! The floors are on turmeric (happy hippie Advil)! It was a little eerie, I am sure to get over it quickly though. 

While the floors went in upstairs I was trying to finish patching up our window woodwork in our first floor living room. 

The wood paneling  below the windows were in better shape than upstairs, but still cracked and mottled with mystery holes. I swear, someone once upon a time, had a twitchy trigger finger and a power drill. The trim work however is new, as the old came off in order to insulate around the new windows, and was then salvaged to finish out the upstairs apartment in entirety with matching original trim. So much of it was already missing from our unit that it made the most sense to preserve it all in one unit, upstairs where it was needed. I am feeling pretty good about the results. I still have one final run before calling them FINISHED. 

It was pretty dreamy painting clean, new trim. Shhhh, don't tell. 

The flooring installers have since moved onto our unit and things are getting exciting!

Living Room sneak peak

Do you love the view of our storage room filled to the brim next to our living room? The fridge is indeed currently operational. Our bedroom however has been relocated completely into the basement as they started laying the floors in there today! 

Yes, that is early 1990s vinyl used as underlayment for the floors. It was already there, in good physical shape (mentally I can't comment), and a bit cushier than what is going in elsewhere. It is flat, even and tight, spandex for the floors. The floors are being nailed in so it didn't pose a problem to leave it, no more heat gun glue floor removal for this gal.

While the work continues upstairs, we are currently living a 6 year old's dream as our basement living pace became a giant pillow fort this week. Our mattress has become sleepover central as it is set up on the floor between the couch and floor. Sophie Dog is in Hog heaven. 

Floors and More

Ding- dong! Who's there? Floors, wood, hard, awesome. Hi-lo.

We had a big delivery today! All the wood, underlayment, polyurethane, etc for our floors arrived. We've got two big glorious piles of wood just waiting to lay on down. The wood will acclimate to our house for a few days and work will start on Monday (psst...it is Monday now, and spoiler, floors going in are glorious!). It is going to be a little tricky living at the house during the install. The second floor won't be any trouble, but we are still sleeping in the bedroom on the first floor and the only running water is on the first floor as well. 

Just look at all that glorious wood! 

We've tackled more difficult situations but the thought of moving completely into the basement isn't a favorite. We'll hold out until the bedroom is the last room left to install.  The second floor will also be the first sanded and sealed. Once it comes time to finish the first floor, we'll either clear out for several days, or in a dream world, we'd have a working toilet and sink upstairs and just camp out upstairs. 

But my joy can't be tampered by potentially tricky living situations (aka no toilet). We've lived through it all at this point anyhow. So, I am nearly bursting at the thought of our finished living room floors, I even giggled out loud when I saw the feature strip wood stacked into the space next to the oak. What is a feature strip? Oh man, only my favorite part about original old flooring. Here, for example:

image from Billy's Floors

The photo above is a bit wider than our feature strip, but the angles around our bayed window and the coloring is just about identical to what our finished floor will look like. We chose to go with a 3/4" Peruvian walnut for the single feature strip. Our white oak will be left natural and finished in a clear water based poly. I love the high contrast and think it will look perfect with the dark stain I have on our windows. 

This beauty below was featured on 6sqft.com and has me more than a little envious. Look at all those beautiful details, the carved wood screen between the two parlors definitely does it for me. And yet, to me, the simple inlay around the edge of the floors seems just as thoughtful as all the other wood work.  

While we can't afford crazy detailed mill work and paneling, nor would it be entirely fitting of the home and its original middle class neighborhood construction, we can place a few details back into the property to bring it back to life. The living room is our modern day parlor, our public space, even though it has moved to the rear of the house and combined with the dining room. These public rooms are where the decorative elements make the most sense, and from a budgetary standpoint, will be worth the most. We have a few other small details that we'll add back in, but more on that later.