First and foremost, here is the wall in the living room. Norm the Painter finished this wall on Friday. Looking back, we think we should have just left the green there, because the wall colour takes away from the wood on the windows. But what's done is done. I can't even really say what colour it is, because it looks so different everytime we look at it. The colour is called Spice Variety:
Ryan and I were at the house Friday night, getting things ready for the next day when we would be finishing the wood. We quickly realized that since Norm was done the painting, he took all of his supplies...including all of the lights that we had been using previously. We tried to make do with what we had. We first of all did a water test in the shower to make sure that it wasn't leaking anywhere. We put some water down the drain and it wasn't really going anywhere. Of course, we didn't have a plunger, all we had was some balloons. I decided that I was going to use a balloon as a plunger, and Ryan just scoffed at me, thinking I was crazy. I sure proved him wrong. If you ever need a plunger and you don't have one, but you do have a balloon, use it! It works. I've tried using a 2L bottle with the spout cut off, and that works too, but the balloon works much better. We plunged with the balloon, and then realized that what we were trying to push down the drain was the water that is supposed to sit in the trap. I added a lot more water and it went down the drain without a problem. So we took a long balloon, filled it up with water, tied it off, turned it upside down and stuck it down the drain, and then proceeded to fill the shower with water. You would not believe how much water a shower floor will hold. I think we used 6 mop pail buckets full of water to get to the level we wanted to be at. So that was done. We rigged up a stick and string and attached it to the transition strip we had leaning in the shower, and hung the stick down so it was just touching the water, so that the next day when we came back, we would be able to tell if anything leaked.
We then went downstairs (which in a two-storey house when you're on the second floor means the main floor, not the basement - we actually had a discussion about this) and Ryan cut out the venting that we had previously covered over with flooring, and I started to lay out pieces of wood to be installed the next morning. I got about 7 rows down by the time Ryan was done cutting, and we went home.
Saturday morning we got to the house at about 8:30, and by 9:30, everyone who was helping us had shown up. We got to work right away, but it wasn't long before we had to stop and do some thinking and figuring out how to install a strip at the entryway to the kitchen from the hallway. That took quite some time, but once that was all figured out, we started moving quite well again. We broke for lunch at about 1:30, and we were only about 1/4 of the way done...We had some troubles again when we were fitting pieces between the posts on the stairway going upstairs, and when we got to the point where we couldn't use the nailer/stapler anymore. We kept going and stopped for supper at 8:30. It's hard to believe how fast time flies when you're working. After supper we worked for what felt like only about an hour and a half. Ryan's mom bailed out the shower while I ran the bailed water outside to dump out. We drained the shower after determining that there were no leaks. The water hadn't gone down at all, so Kris is now good to go on tiling the shower. As for the hardwood, we had a few cuts that were made wrong, and at that point we decided to call it quits for the day...about 6 boards away from finishing the whole floor. We packed up what we needed to, and got out of there. When we got into the car, I looked at the clock...it was 12:30! I could not believe that it was that late. I guess once you get working you just put your head down and power through, and time doesn't really factor into it.
On Sunday, Ryan and I went to the house and finished off the remaining boards, cleaned up each of the rooms, and finally took some pictures of the finished floors. We are supposed to meet the guy who's refinishing them at the house on Tuesday night...Hopefully he doesn't take one look and run away screaming, or up the price for refinishing it...
We also cleaned out the kitchen so that Kris can go in on Monday and install the kitchen flooring and the mudroom flooring. Again, I can't wait to get out to the house tonight to see the flooring!
No comments:
Post a Comment