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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similar to what we did in the dining room, this weekend my goal was to remove the thin top layer, and the secondary layer below. Underneath both of those is the substrate… but we’re leaving that for the flooring guys to remove.
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.
Removing the tile is one thing, but the next step involves cleaning each piece so they can be put back in place. It’s a lot of physical work to clean each one, but they really do shine afterwards.
Liz has been powering through getting all the fireplace hearthstone/tiles cleared and demo-ed, in preparation for the upcoming floor work we have scheduled.
With our recent work on the dining room floor, we’ve decided to move Liz’s office/desk over to the front of the house (the living room).
With the cabinet interior done, we just had to cut a 10′ board and slap it up. We debated a bit, and then Liz said “Let’s just stop talking and do it.”
I’ve been pretty bleary-eyed since our work last night. And both Liz and I are pretty exhausted. But it’s exciting to see this room shape up, and I look forward to seeing its progression over the course of the weekend.
This afternoon, Liz and I got a text from Bob asking if we’d be able to finish up the living room drywall before tomorrow. I agreed to the work (and to also relocate about 10 sheets of 10′ drywall out of the living room), all before tomorrow AM. So we could have a taper come over in the afternoon and begin his work.
Today, Liz and I had dentist appointments in the late morning. We got home around 2:00 PM and decided to spend the rest of the day cleaning up the first floor.
We’ve kept several sheets of plywood and drywall in Bob’s truck, in our driveway. With a lot of our existing drywall actually on the walls, we had a bit more room to haul stuff inside.
Liz and I worked a lot tonight on getting the drywall in the living room finished up. While we have a few more areas left, the majority of what we can tackle got finished tonight: two smaller pieces, and one larger piece with a precise cutout for a return vent. At the close of the…