Dining Room Fireplace, Tile Removal
Liz has taken on the challenging and stressful task of removing all the tile in our dining room fireplace. They’re all pretty loose, and need to get re-installed.
Posts Tagged "dining room"
New Floor Install, Day 3
This really is an amazing thing, and a tremendous milestone for me and Liz. We’ve been working for a long, long time on the house and so much of that work has been subtractive in nature: demo and removal.
To be at a point where we are adding new things, shaping the house anew, is incredibly exciting. Every time I come down and stand in these rooms, it just takes my breath away.
New Floor Install, Day 1
A lot of planning today, with a majority of the time spent figuring out what needed to be done, measurements for the fireplace tile frame, and framing up all the floor vents.
Cleaning the First Floor
I also took the shop vac and went over every inch of the floor. This was pretty time-consuming, but ended up taking less time than I figured. In a lot of spots, the plywood had more dirt and grime than I realized, and lightened up considerably with each pass.
Clearing the First Floor
After work tonight, Liz and I relocated a lot of material… elsewhere. We’ve got the flooring guys coming in a matter of days, and we needed to remove as much excess material (leftover drywall, plywood, wood) as possible.
Flooring Has Arrived
But those stressors aside, the fact that we have our flooring physically here? The fact that we’re at this phase in the process, aiming to get actual new floors down… it’s really remarkable. It’s a tremendous milestone for us. And amidst the whirl and bustle of everything that has happened (and has yet to happen), it’s easy to lose track of that.
Creating Space on the First Floor
One of the strong arguments against renovating your home while living inside it: the lack of available space. We’ve gotten used to shuffling things around, but things on the first floor are starting to get a bit cramped.
First Floor Leveling, Day 8
It’s amazing to see the first floor so… open. And for the floor to feel so continuously solid, room to room. It really does feel like a different space, walking around. The rooms are continuing to look more and more like rooms again.
First Floor Leveling, Day 7
Today, Nick and Milton put down some of the plywood on top of the self-leveling underlayment. This will end up creating a really solid sandwich, as there’s a layer of plywood underneath everything already.
First Floor Leveling, Day 6
The day has arrived! It’s time for the big pour! I can’t stress to you how big of a milestone this is for us. I know it’s an intermediate step, and we’re not even close to the final floor install… but to be at a point where the leveling is possible is incredibly exciting. It’s difficult to express how fantastic this moment/day feels.
First Floor Leveling, Day 5
Something I wasn’t prepared for though: pink floors!
First Floor Leveling, Day 3
Next up: Nick says he’s going to seal up all the edges and seams between boards, in prepartion for the self-leveling underlayment. I recall him saying something like how we needed to seal up the floor “like a siwmming pool,” because if the self-leveling liquid finds a gap… it’s just going to pour right down into the basement like water.
First Floor Leveling, Day 1
We’re lucky to have Milton and Nick (L to R) working on our floors. Bob’s worked with them before on a few jobs, and the come highly recommended. Bob’s got an incredibly high bar for the quality of work he expects of those in the trade… so when he’s enthusiastic about someone, we know to pay attention.
The Night Before the Flooring Work Begins
We had a lot of debris to take out, but our first floor is officially cleared and prepped for the flooring guys tomorrow. It’s a crazy feeling, to see how different the floors look, and to imagine people coming in to take over the remainder of the work.
The First Floor Shuffle
The goal: to free up the living room, so we can tackle the floor demo over the coming days. We’re aiming to clear up the floor much like we did in the dining room, taking things down to the substrate.