Tired

We brought the rug down and rolled it out in the room. Things are warming up in there. I can picture the room now. It's really coming together.



As you can see in the pic below, there's a lot of work to do. There's tons of dust and I think I need to touch up some of the paint. I know it's going to take a while. We are just so busy these days.

Painted floors continued

We continued with the floors this week. We put a total of 3 coats of paint down and two coats of polyurethane. The poly really seals the paint and makes the floor smooth to walk on. It's growing on me.



There is some yellowing through the paint that we are not sure where it's coming from.


The wall looks really pretty with the light floors. I can't wait to have the quarter round installed to cover up that forest green strip of paint. There is a lot of cleaning to do as well.

We painted the floor

The floor was in such bad shape that we decided to paint it. Appalling I know! But in a few short years we are going to have the place recarpeted and we are going to put a rug over this floor so we figured why not.






It was still a lot of work. There was so much debris. We swept, vacuumed, swept some more and mopped. It was filthy.






Here is the first coat. It's difficult to see in the pic but it's a light gray color. Keith thinks it's very white and makes the walls look very yellow. Perhaps we should have gone with a warmer color.






Second coat. We will have to go over the seams with a brush. Do you see that dark border along the floor? It's the forest green paint that the last owner painted the baseboard. We bought quarter round to go around the room to cover it up and to cover the gap between baseboard and floor.

The floor requires 2-3 coats of polyurethane. I'm not sure how I feel about the floor right now but I'm sure it will be fine. Painting a wood floor doesn't seem like an ideal choice.




Another photo in the morning.

Out with the Old

Now that the guest room is mostly complete, we started working on the other room by removing the 80s green carpeting.



Guinness enjoying the carpet one last time.


Grabbing the carpet by one end we just yanked and pulled it from the nails that keep it down around the room.


Under the carpet was the carpet pad which you can see Keith about to rip up here.


Then there was a thin layer of wood subfloor which was nailed to the hardwood.


Yup! Keith chucked everything out the window. It just made things easier.


What I don't understand is why the middle of the floor isn't stained and sealed. Keith said it's because people used to nail china rugs to the floor. I guess people didn't appreciate hardwood as we do now.


Wats all da noise about? We were left with all these nails in the floor so Keith hammered them all down into the floor.

Poly da Floor

The first coat is on. We need 4 coats. It's 2 hours between coats! Boy this project turned out to be a longer project than we thought.


See the difference now?



We used a lambskin brush.



The poly is white and has a glue like consistency.

Stained floor

It's stained! It's finally stained! Look how beautiful. We will have to wait until morning to take another photo.


After


During


Before

Floor progress

Floor progress with 120 grit sand paper. You can really see the difference in the surface.






Before with 80 grit.






After sanding again with 120 grit.

Floor progress

Here is the sanded floor with 80 grit sand paper. It took 2 days for the dust to settle and then we went back and vacuumed and cleaned again.



I can't wait to see what the finished floor will look like.

Let's Talk Floors

After I painted the walls and moulding in the new guest room, it was time to do something about the floors. We toss different ideas around and weren't really sure if we wanted to make the effort to sand them down and re-stain them.

We rolled the area rug up which came with the house and found this. Most of it vacuumed up. Using a damp rag, we wiped the floor down and cleaned any dust.

We went cheap and instead of renting a sander from Home Depot or Lowe's, we just used what we had - a hand sander and a band saw with 40, 80, and 120 grit sand paper.

Using the band saw with the 40 grit sand paper, Keith worked on areas that seem to need the most work before moving towards the rest of the floor.

After sanding a small area (3x3), stop and vacuum the saw dust up with a shop vac. Pretty soon we could see it was totally worth sanding the floors. We read a couple of different tutorials. It's important that you're just sanding off the previous varnish and smoothing the surface out. There's only so much you can sand before you compromise the strength of the floor.

Half Bathroom: Day 4 - Grout

Bill the tiler came over first thing this morning in all that snow we had to grout the tile. He came around 7:40AM and was done, cleaned up and gone by 8:15AM!


Tadaa! It looks awesome and I can't wait to see what it will look like with the sink vanity and toilet in there. Not that I'm really excited about the toilet, but you get what I mean.

Before photo:


The plumber won't be back until next Wednesday... :( It's going to seem like an eternity from now.

Half Bathroom Day 3: Tiling

Bill the Tiler was awesome!

He was all business and went straight to work. He was so fast too, which is a real rare quality!

9:11 AM

While he waited for Pat to bring the cement board, Bill had already started laying down the tile to check out the pattern and make the awkward cuts around the toilet and water line.


He was hardcore working in a hail and snow storm outside!


Basil was helping me too and was laying down drop cloths so they wouldn't dirty *his* floor.


Leveling. Before he laid down the cement board, he applied a layer of thin set (which we forgot to do when we tiled the kitchen). The thin set gives the cement board that support it needs so that it doesn't flex and cause your tile or grout to crack. Opps! He told us he'll need to level the bathroom floor up to the kitchen floor by applying extra thin set on top of the cb but before the tile. That would take longer to dry.

11:37 AM


12:18 PM

He finished the corners, threshold and was already all cleaned up!

I'm glad I pushed for the diagonal pattern. It looks awesome! He's going to come back tomorrow to grout.

Because of the snow storm and all, the plumber won't be back until next Wednesday to finish the bathroom.

The tiler is here and boy is he good!

It's only 9:18 in the morning and the tiler got here and went straight to work! That's what I like to see! He has some amazing tools too which I'll try to post about. It's a little sad that I'm more excited about his cutting tools than say jewelry or something else like that.

I'm staying out of his way, but I told him that occasionally I'm going to run in and snap photos like MI-8 for my blog.

He immediately cleaned up, took measurements, marked the floor, started laying the tile pattern down and made all the trickier cuts before getting started.

I'm so excited about this tile!

By the way, we did run into a snafu. We never went back to buy more floor tiles to match the kitchen and those tiles are now discontinued. So we found a similar match in texture and color, but the bathroom tile is a little more brown and 13x13 instead of 12x12. So I asked the tiler to do a diagonal pattern, so that we're not trying to match what isn't matching anyway.

I'll be back with pictures tonight, so check back!

Baseboard trim

I have the best husband in the whole world! Besides finishing the ceiling, installing the lights and chandelier the hubs caulked all the trim in the kitchen and even installed the baseboard trim.



We did salvage the old trim and planned on reusing it. After some thought, we decided to update it and buy new baseboard that was 6" instead of 4. There's just so much wear and tear on a kitchen and I think the taller baseboard will be easier to clean too.

Blue Modern Rug

I'm feelin' this rug right now. It would look great in a big home office with wood floors.


From Overstock here

Project: Tile

I love the shows on NJN like This Old House. They have really practical projects and every time I turn on the TV, they are doing a project we're doing! Today, they were tiling a floor and so are we! We called a plumber to put in the dishwasher and he recommended that we tile the floor first, so now we're in a mad rush to get the floor tiled. It works out since this really puts a fire under us to get this project done and over with!

Area: 113 SF (add 10% and round up)
Materials:
Coffee and cinnamon sprinkled elephant ear $3


Tools: ~$25 We made the investment in purchasing the tools since we plan on tiling the bathroom floor and someday half bath. Tools really add up quick and can be a tough pill to swallow especially if you need 2 of each.


Flooring: This stuff is extremely heavy, so bring your muscles when you get ready to purchase.

• Backerboard $8.99/3x5 sheet
• Tile $1.14/SF - Tile was on clearance from .49+. We spent a little more for this tile which had a varied pattern with touches of grey in it. Also, the tile had a slate-like finish that we liked the look and feel of.
  
• Grout $13/bag - Grout comes in different color options. We went with the "marble beige".
  

Thinset $36/bag - This is the bond that will go between the tile and the sub-floor. This is white, but I think we should have gotten the gray color, so you can see the notches in it as you lay it down.


Before: The dishwasher will go to the right and the cabinets will be replaced. The sink will be removed.


Stay tuned!!!