Part One of Hardwood (Recap)

I know I've already shown pictures of the finished floor, but I thought I'd go back and show the process.  Installing flooring isn't technically difficult, but it's physically demanding.  It also is a little tedious around the edges, because the floor nailer is too big to get close to the walls. 

Step one was to drag huge heavy boxes of wood up the basement stairs, since the wood had been living in the garage.

Opening up the boxes of wood was pretty exciting.  It's pre-finished floor, which I would without question choose again for a DIY floor project.  The wood we chose was a natural Hickory with a clear finish.  Hickory has a lot of variation in the color of each board. I think makes the floor look homey and rustic, which suits our style perfectly.  The colors in the wood are gorgeous too, really rich and not too yellow.  We used 3 insh wide planks, 3/4" thick.  Thats pretty standard for hardwood floors these days.

Pre-finished flooring has a tiny bevel on all the edges.  It's there so that any minute variations in the thickness of the planks will be hidden, but it does mean the floor doesn't have that glassy, prefectly smooth finish that sanded-on-site floors have.  I don't mind the little micro-bevel, but I know some people don't like it. If you're choosing between the two, keep that in mind. I have not had any problem with dirt being caught in the beveled areas, because they are so shallow that the vacuum sucks everything right out.

I started laying floor in the area under the range. I figured if I was going to screw it up, I should do it in a place where it would be invisible.  It was a little scary, because the entire floor on the whole first level of the house would be set off of this area.  I measured and re-measured (and triple re-measured!) before I laid the first plank to make sure the wood was still going to be running parallel to the walls when I finally reached the other side of the house.  No going back now!

We were really happy with how the floor held up under the range, even after we had to slide the range in and out a couple of times.  No scratches on the floor!

To install the floor close to walls or cabinets, I had to predrill then hand nail every board. I put nails into the planks about every 6-8" because i wanted to make sure the planks were securely held.  Much later, I learned a better way to do this, but that's a story for another time.

Woo, looking like real floor!!  At this point I think i rolled around on the floor to properly appreciate my handiwork ;) Both of us were really excited with how great the floor looked at this point.  The hardest thing was actually choosing which board should go where.  I was aiming for that intentionally patternless look.  Plus, I was cherry-picking all the nice boards for visible areas and using boards with marks or knots for hidden areas.

The boards have to be laid pretty much all in one long row.  You can see here how I got a stepped pattern because of the way I was laying the boards.  This is how the pros often do it, but it's actually better to avoid this pattern if possible.  You will end up with a stronger floor if it doesn't have this stepped pattern.  After I realized it, I avoided doing this when possible. Some areas of the floor it just couldn't be avoided.

So that's part one!  This much work took me a whole weekend.  It's a tough job for a single person to work on because all the supplies are heavy but, once the basics are in place, it's easy to fly across the middle section of the room.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Undercabinet Lights!

My dad, being the superstar he is, came to visit and installed undercabinet lights in the kitchen! They look AMAZING! I can't believe how dramatic the kitchen looks with them in. He hooked one whole side of the kitchen to the light switch. He gave them their own switch too, so you can turn on the sink lights or the under cabinet lights individually, which looks really professional.

I'm so excited and impressed! No more delay, on to the pics!

Before:

After:

What an awesome transformation!

House Looking Pretty Good!

Well it's been a long haul and we still have miles to go before we sleep (so to speak), but here is the current update on how the house is looking.

When you come in the front door, the living room is the first room:

Then you walk down the hallway towards the kitchen:

Then you see the gorgeous, bright new kitchen! The eat-in area is so functional now (especially since the dining room is still in disarray), and it suits the kitchen perfectly.

Here's another view of the kitchen (still needs cabinet doors):

The den connects to the kitchen and makes the whole space feel really open. The new floor flows seamlessly and give really good continuity between the rooms.

So you can see, there is a lot of work left to do (plus, I didn't exactly "stage" the rooms for the pictures, as evidenced by the cat litter under the desk in the den). We still need doors for the kitchen cabinets, and a backsplash in the kitchen, and baseboard molding, and most of the walls still need to be painted. . . the list goes on. But for now, we're really excited with the progress! It's like a real house now!

Kitchen Demo

Time to start the kitchen renovation.

First, demo. Here is the kitchen before. To the left of the stove, there is a redundant closet/pantry. To the left of that pantry, there is another pantry. There is also ANOTHER pantry to the left of the refrigerator. So basically step one was to remove two of the three pantries in favor of more cabinets and counter space.

Before:


And after:
I know it looks like we've created less counter and fewer cabinets by doing this, but don't you fret. We have plans!

We scooted the fridge over into the space where pantry #3 used to be. Since it's recessed into the wall, the fridge sits back quite a bit and is very unobtrusive now. It's a counter-depth fridge anyway, so it was already not very obtrusive.


Here is how the room looks with the new layout. Ahhh, breathing room! We purchased a few cabinets on craigslist because we found some that were a match to the existing ones--lucky! I dragged one into place to show how the layout will look down the line.


Please excuse the dust. Renovation :) I have a lot of cabinets to build.

Greenhouse Shelf

The greenhouse is all set up, but it needed a place for plants besides the floor. The greenhouse building video showed a way to install some shelves, so I pretty much followed their instructions. It was not a huge project; it took about an afternoon of work.

I used a 2x2 as the front edge support for the shelf. The center brace that is part of the greenhouse wall was be the back support. In this picture you can see the back brace (with metal L bracket) that will hold up the back of the shelf. I used a bracket that I could slide over the redwood brace because i didn't want to put holes in the pretty redwood.
To make the shelf itself, I cut poplar dimensional lumber into lengths and set them across the supports.

Some of them had to be custom cut to fit. I cut notches in the back of the slats to wrap then around the wall studs (you can see why I needed to do that in this picture). I couldn't just cut them short because they wouldn't have anything supporting them in the back.


Here is a closer picture of the slats. You can see where I cut them to fit around the wall studs. The colors in the wood I used for the slats were really beautiful. It's not as rich as the redwood of the greenhouse itself, but the colors definitely work. Wood is gorgeous.


Here is how the shelf looks from across the greenhouse. You can see my little space heater in there keeping it above freezing. The heater doesn't have to run all the time--it has an "anti-freeze" setting, which just keeps the temp above 35 in there. During the day it stays cozy warm just from the sun, but it needs a little help from the heater at night. You can also see the 2x2 legs that i put on the shelf for support. Don't want my little plantalonas to come tumbling down!


I nailed the slats it just along the front edge (for now) to hold them in place. I didn't want to put a million holes in the redwood, which is why i didn't nail the back edge down, but I may change that later if the slats are not secure enough.

Look how happy the little plants look basking in the winter sun! All warm and cozy in the greenhouse :)

Greenhouse First Half

The greenhouse retaining wall has been a lot of work, so it has taken a while to get the area ready to hold up the greenhouse. The part that took the most work was backfilling behind the wall. It required a lot more dirt than I had available, so I dug a giant hole in the very back of the yard to get more dirt. I loaded about 100 wheelbarrows full into the area behind the wall! It took many days to complete this process; moving the wheelbarrow up and down the hill in our yard is exhausting, and we've had very bad weather recently, including snow!
Finally, this weekend was forecast to be sunny and in the 50s. The retaining wall was build, and the backfilled dirt was all packed down to within an inch of its life. Time to build the greenhouse!

I spent a lot of time preparing and leveling the base. I had already started doing this part of the work a few days ago, but today was the day to make it perfect. It doesn't have to be exactly, perfectly level, but I didn't want it to look wonky and it obviously had to be square.Once I had the base exactly where I wanted it, I realized the bushes on both sides of the greenhouse would have to be cut back to make room for the walls. The weigela behind the greenhouse got a hard trim, but it shouldn't have any trouble next spring (most of the bush was still there). The lilac bush right near the future greenhouse door location will probably have to be moved (or cut back to the ground). It's a giant tree right now and waaaay too big.

Once all the bushes were trimmed, we decided we needed some sort of gutter along the back between the house and the greenhouse, so water didn't end up trapped there. So off I went to the hardware store. They didn't have small lengths of gutter, so I bought and modified a black drainpipe.I used silicone adhesive to fill the gap between the gutter and the house. It's not pretty, but once the greenhouse is built it will be invisible.The best thing about the black drain pipe is that I was able to bend the end of it so that the water will spill off the retaining wall and away from the house. Eventually I will probably hook the end up to a water barrel for garden watering needs.Once the gutter was in place, we scrubbed the mildew off the siding and then it was time for greenhouse walls! We worked quickly because the light was fading (all the prep work took forever!) so I don't have many pictures of the process. I will tell you that the instructions don't come in print form, they are on a CD in 30-minute-video form! I watched it all the way through a few days ago to prepare, but I couldn't remember everything, so we're outside with my laptop, watching snippets of video and screwing wood together. Hilarious!

Here is how it looks from a little farther away.

The walls are made out of two layers of plastic with little extra plastic to support it. It's light, but the wood is heavy. Overall it seems pretty sturdy, and free bonus: it provides a little more privacy on the patio!

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow!

Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Here are the decorations I put on our house. They are pretty minimal, but I think they make an impact. At least our neighbors know the house isn't foreclosed any more!

All I did was cut monsters out of newspaper and tape them to the windows. In the picture you can see through the newspaper a lot, so I actually put a second layer on all the monsters to make them less translucent.
They still looked like newspaper, but that's ok. Baby steps. The hubby mentioned that this is the most outwardly decorated our home has ever been. And that is a sad truth (I blame graduate school!).

From inside, they looked pretty sloppy:
But I will probably use them again next year anyway. I'm fond of my little monsters :)

Safe and candyful halloween to all!