November 4, 2020
After work, I spent some time getting primer on the living room ceiling and walls. A slow discovery: I really, really hate priming walls. And probably painting, too.
I thought I’d be ok with it, but there’s a patience and precision that I just seem to lack. Maybe it was my mental state this week, but I was just impatient, easily frustrated, and just angry at the whole process.
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November 1, 2020
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.
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October 30, 2020
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.
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October 29, 2020
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.
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October 12, 2020
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.
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October 11, 2020
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.
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September 22, 2020
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.
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September 21, 2020
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.
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September 19, 2020
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.
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September 18, 2020
Something I wasn’t prepared for though: pink floors!
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September 17, 2020
The flooring guys (Nick and Milton) put in the final bits of plywood, covering over the joists that Bob strengthened yesterday. After that, they sealed up a lot of the seams between the plywood they had put down.
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September 16, 2020
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.
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September 14, 2020
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.
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September 13, 2020
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.
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August 30, 2020
There wasn’t a ton of flooring left to remove, but there was a ton of cleanup to do today: cutting up all the boards, removing all the splinters, pulling out all the remaining nails, and shop-vacing the whole room.
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