Flooring is hard and dirty work

Flooring is hard work. I honestly though that three days over the memorial weekend would be enough to get the floor down. I’d already pulled up all the old boards, so all we had to do was repair the termite damaged sub floor and lay the oak.

The sub floor was worse then I’d expected – although not as bad as it could have been. When I first started pulling up the old fir, it looked as though most of the sub floor had been chewed up. I honestly though I was going to have to replace the whole lot – although that may have worked out faster. In the end we had to replace about 240 linear ft of the 1*6. I’d arranged for a friend of mine to come over and help and even with the two of us it still took Saturday and Sunday to get the repairs done.

Here’s the dining room after repair:


And looking towards the living room:


Most of the corner under the pile of floor boards was replaced. You can tell the new boards by their color.

The three tenets of a good builder are Plumb, Level and Square. Level is a bit much to hope for in a 90 year old house, so we settled for flat. Monday morning saw us crawling around the floor with a straight edge checking that variances didn’t exceed an 1/8th inch over 6ft. We got lucky.

Next up was laying roofing paper to absorb the squeaks and any minor variances.



We decided on a double width for the transition between the main run and the fireplace hearth. The rooms are long and narrow, so the boards have to run long ways or else you end up with the “ladder” effect. The transition breaks the line of the boards running to the hearth, and defines the border between the floor and the hearth

Here’s the first board laid down. You can also see the chalk reference lines


I don’t have a picture of it, but the next step was to run two long runs of boards from the hearth to the window seat in the dining room. These runs are “groove to groove” with a slip tongue joining them. This allows the floor boards to run in two opposite directions which will make things a lot easier once we get to the columns.

By this point it was about 3:00pm on Monday afternoon.

This is where we got to at 9:00pm Monday:


The two “back to back” runs are on the left. Things definitely progressed faster once we had everything snapped out and were just laying the boards. In case you’re wondering, the string hanging from the dining room light fixture is to help us avoid the pointy bit. Its hard to avoid obstacles above you when your attention is focused on the floor.

Here are a couple of better photos taken this morning:




I really like the color of the floor. Its almost a shame that we have to refinish it.

I’ve still got to post pictures of the shed. Hopefully this weekend.

Memorial Weekend (or the weekend to forget?)

After slogging through nearly a years worth of updates on my favorite house blog, I felt inspired to update ours. Either that or guilted into it. Yeah, that's more like it.

PK spent last weekend pulling out the old floor boards in the two front rooms, the living and dining rooms. We had ummed and ahhed about replacing it, but there were a number of factors that settled it for us.

When we pulled up the 12 inch ceramic tiles and plywood sheeting that a PO had installed, we found that the doug fir floor wasn't in as good a condition as we'd hoped. There were areas of termite damage that made parts of it dangerous to walk on. We weren't even sure the floor had been fully uncovered from when the house was built, as the grade of the wood wasn't fantastic. It had definitely been stained in the past, but for a large amount of time it seemed to have been covered with area rugs and then carpet (and then our wonderful tile).

The floor has been exposed for about a year now, and we haven't treated it with any kindness. It's had a lathe and plaster ceiling pulled down on it, paint and plaster dropped on it, and a fair share of cat pee and poop dropped on it too.

Here's the floor in it's "au naturel" state. Note one of the two pee and poop machines resting on the mantel. Your time will come, evil one.



When PK started pulling it up last weekend we realised we'd made the right decision. The wood was shot - it was difficult to get any boards up in one piece, as they kept splintering like cardboard. Many of the boards had been face nailed at some point by over zealous carpet installers (or anyone attempting to fix a squeak) which would have been a real bitch when it came to sanding and polishing.

Here's a shot of a particularly bad board.



PK managed to get a number of intact boards out which we will use to repair any further boards in the rest of the house. Based on the state of these boards we're thinking that carpet may be the way to go for the other rooms. If the boards are all crap we don't want to have to replace them - too expensive. As much as I'd love a fully wooden floored house, it won't be this one.

This weekend sees our intrepid workers installing our new/old oak flooring in the living and dining room. All that nail pulling is finally going to pay off. PK and our new found contractor Ryan are currently in the process of repairing the termite eaten boards in the sub floor, which has taken the better part of two days.





There's also a large underfloor gas heater that needed to be disconnected and covered up. It's cemented to the foundation so we won't be moving it anytime soon. Hell, who's to say that in 50 years time another overzealous home "restornovator" won't crack open the subfloor and curse us out for covering up such a post modern convienience? Stranger things have happened. In the mean time, we will cover it with sub floor and oak flooring and let them worry about it.

I'll post more later with (hopefully) laid floor boards! Yay!

P.S. In case you're wondering, we had Terminex come out and treat the house for subterranean termites. They have been coming out to spray our yard for the last 12 months (since the cucaracha and fleas incident) so we thought we'd use them for the termite issue. They did a great job, but be warned - they had to drill holes all around the perimeter of the house at 12 inch intervals to drop the poison in.

PK was home when they did it, and was most "surprized" to come round the front of the house to find them drilling holes into the porch where it meets the house. It doesn't look too bad, and faced with the alternative of termites I'll take the drill, but it did give us a shock. If we'd known that was what they would do, we would have looked into other methods. Just goes to show, make sure you know what someone is intending to do when they quote a job.

Period appropriate capital S-hed

I wrote this one evening a couple of weeks ago, after a too large glass of wine, but thought you might enjoy it anyway. The pics are still coming, dammit.

Hey, it's only May. Give us a break. What do you think we are - The Devil Queen?

Seriously though folks, I was outta town for a month there in April. Yes, I managed to wrangle a week of work in New Zealand, followed by two weeks vacation with family and friends. Lovely to see everyone down there, but also nice to come (dare I say it?) home again.

The house is coming along. The last time we left you, PK was building a Shed. With a capital S. It's probably THE most period appropriate Shed I've ever seen. Exposed rafter tails. Knee joints - whatever those are! Even it's own little dinky "stacking" door so we can load floor boards straight into the - errr - loading area without having to - I don't know - open the main hanger doors?

This Shed took a fair amount of time to construct, with no small help from friends (thanks friends!) Upon my arrival back in the States, (and after my two day bout of stomach flu) I was filled with the milk of human kindness. Must have been all those grapes I ate while I was poorly. I figured PK had spent enough of his hard earned time (and money) on this Shed and it was about time I put a bit of effort in. So I volunteered to paint it. Not with colored paint mind you - I wasn't that silly to commit to a whole project (we did only paint our living and dining rooms a few months ago, so the memory of that hellish Thanksgiving weekend is still fresh.)

No, I volunteered for the "easy" job of priming the confernal structure. Easy peasy I thought - I'll have two coats on there in no time. PK suggested we borrow a friends paint sprayer, but I declined - how hard could this be? (Has my memory really gotten this bad?)

Little did I realise what the downside to "period appropriate" was. It means lots of additional little wooden bits to paint - rafters, palings, the gaps between palings and doors (but not hinges).

Needless to say, I got one coat on last weekend without getting into the gaps between the "boards" in the siding before calling it quits. The paint sprayer arrives next weekend. Bring it on I say. (Pictures to follow. I promise.)

This weekend just gone we had fun and good times removing nails from floor boards. The nice part about this (no, really) is that instead of just me having a bitchingly sore arm and hand, I have a sore hand, while PK has a sore arm. This was because we decided to tag team the nail removal instead of just having one person do it (alright, so last time PK may have been tearing out the floorboards with a WonderBar and his bare hands while I removed the nails, but let's not get bogged down in details.)

I believe we have effectively proven that Kyptonite is indeed not the hardest substance known to man - 95 year old oak floor boards are. They DO NOT want to relinquish their hold on their beloved little 3 inch nails. We have tried everything - talking rationally, cajoling, crying, nay even an intervention did not convince them they were better off without their little metallic friends. So we had to resort to brute force. And it wasn't pretty. I can't help but think of nail pullers as a torture device, and I'm still not sure it wasn't us being tortured. Half the boards down, half to go.

I'll get some pics soon, honest.