New Floors, WOOHOO!!!

We (basically) finished our floors upstairs.

We used to have Painted Parquet (See Enclosed Pictures).

We loved them soo much that we tore them up and threw them away for others to enjoy.

Here Kent Salmond (Bonnies Brother) Shows how to remove ugly flooring. For those of you thinking of doing the same here is a Video Demonstration.

 note: when using a pry-bar to remove said nasty flooring, attack the floor at a 45 degree angle to the loose painted parquet all while prying up and down to loosen stubborn tiles. Also it is very useful to get some assistance to lesson the amount of pain inflicted on the pry-bar user.

Now for the cleanup of the loose tiles.

Now that they are removed, we can screw down the entire floor (we dont want to worry about squeeks after the floor is down). Thank you Dad, Alan and Matt Byrne.

We went through 15lbs of 3" Screws.

After the screws and a new back brace.We could start laying down the floors.

1. Lay down "Quiet Walk" underlay, while making sure to tape the seams (great vapor, insulation, and noise barrier)

2. Figure out a pattern for the floors. Here is our pattern 9" right, 18" left, 9" left, 18" right and repeat.

3. Start with groove towards the wall (tongue away from the wall) and drill small holes for finishing nails in the upper groove of the tongue on a 45 degree angle, and hand nail each 3' board at least 4-5 times. (thanks to the Diestlers for helping multiple times, Alex drilled and I nailed).

4. Once far enough away from the wall, you can whip out the floor stapler, it goes much quicker with that bad boy (thanks to Jason Wilde for letting us borrow his stapler).

5. when you get close to the wall, again the stapler doesn't fit, you need to screw holes (because the bamboo is harder than oak and will bend the nail if no whole is drilled) and hand nail again.

After 3 bedrooms, a hallway, 4 closets, a living room and a dining room (1,100sq ft) later we have finally finished, woohoo.

Here are some before and afters.

Upper Hallway

Upper Stairs into Living Room

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Bedroom #2

Thanks for joining us on our Journey. This one took us the longest at about 15 months. We know we love it, now you can too, haha.

Tree, Be Gone!!!!

Trees trees everywhere. We liked the trees, but they kept pooping in our pool, and we got tired of cleaning it. they also looked really rickedy. some were dead, some sprouts were trying to die.

There were just too many reasons why we didn't like them. Plus our neighbors tree was HUGE and it was providing better shade then those dinky ones were.

So we cut them all down last fall. they did provide a little bit of privacy, but that wasn't important enough to us.

We killed the wimpy pine trees as well. We aren't a fan of dead grass circles under pine trees.

these are pictures of the backyard before we bought  the house.

This is after the slaughter.

I don't know why, but this reminded me of world war 2, and the gas chambers, with all the heaping bodies. Yeah i know, its a morbid thought. Trees were alive too you know. I guess I'm a tree murderer?

These trees are still there to this day. It got too cold too fast for us to chop them up.

We also had a fun/SCARY encounter with a squirrel, I think we took his home away from him.

I thought he was going to jump and attack me. it was traumatizing.

Yes I worried about his sharp mini talons scratching my legs to bits, while i was taking the video. I was in defense mode. Before the video i got a little closer and he ran down his perch and and ran towards me. i might have screamed like a girl, and i might not. Bonnie can confirm what exactly happened.

My friend when we were little fed a squirrel out of his hand, and he gently took the nut. but when we looked at his hands, he was sliced almost to the bone, and he didnt feel it at all. THATS what i was scared of.

New Stairs!!

Our old stairs had some good cracks running along the whole width of some of the treads, they were painted a glorious Red, and were squeakier then a dog with a chew toy.

All we really wanted to change was the treads. As Dan started to pull them up, they weren't coming without a fight.

The railing had to go, plus we wanted another railing on the right side as well. at this point, the stairs were either completely coming out, or we sand off the RED and somehow un-crack the wood. So out they come.

Now that we can't get upstairs, and Dan works full time along with DanTek jobs on the side. Walking outside with a lantern to go upstairs to shower in the morning was getting old fast (insert picture of frozen half naked human sneaking into house via the porch HERE).

That's when we enlisted Dean (Awesome) Hickenlooper's services. Instead of 1 month of, maybe I have time to put a single stair in. Dean flew in to the rescue.

This picture is about few hours of Deans Masterpiece in action.

Didn't think there could be so many pictures of stairs did you? The skelton steps have emerged, muwahaha.

Now we can get upstairs, YAY. We did do some of the work. Like all the sanding, staining, painting and putting on Polyurethane. We had some time to help, and lets face it, we didn't have the money for Dean to do it all.

Its starting to come together now.

Just some finishing touches.

Here is the finished product, and it took Dean about 15 hours to complete. Great job. It was worth it. Bonnie has some great taste. We cant wait to have a completed home.

Though I hear it's impossible to have a home that's completely done.

Kitchen Progress

The Kitchen is going to be a long process for sure.

We've already done soo much and it still looks like a mess.

So it started as a small, barely any counter space, gateway onto the porch.

We made a few changes to the original.

Like removing a door and a window.

 

Hi Bonnie :)

 

 And then walling them in

 you know, get rid of a few walls while we're at it.

Dan had a little too much fun taking down some of the walls

Bonnie didn't know what I was doing and I scared her, whoops sorry Bon.

Installed a sliding glass door too (Thanks Dean).

Current kitchen layout.

Now that there are holes in the ceiling from the wall, i guess we should close those in (we were losing a lot of heat into the attic, had to fix that)

Now comes the insulation so we aren't freezing anymore.

Dont forget about the drywall either

Then we ran out of drywall. Insert Dans sad face here :(