Let's be realistic ...

So ... now that all of you who have actually laid hardwood before have had a good laugh at the progress we expected to make during our first attempt at installation, we'll revise our goals to more closely model reality.

What actually happened on the weekend was we got almost 2 sides of the hallway (our hallway is shaped like a U) done, we painted the front wall in the hallway, and burned some scrap lumber.

So ... our new schedule looks like:

Tuesday: Peter - finish laying hardwood on first two sides of hallway along with a few rows into the office and guest room. Angela - teach a friend how to lay tile.

Wednesday: Worship team practice. Possibly lay some hardwood once we get home.

Thursday: Lay hardwood in guest room.

Friday: Lay hardwood in office (finish guest room first if not completed).

Saturday: Hang door in master bath. Lay hardwood in office. Lay remaining tile in master bath and laundry room (just a few tile - maybe 10 total).

Monday (yay - holiday!): Grout tiles laid on Saturday and tub surround. Lay hardwood on third side of hallway.

Hopefully this schedule is reasonable. I'll let you know ;)

The Finished Product!

Aren't they purty?

What a great night we had. As you can see below, Peter got started laying hardwood while I got the first coat of paint on the guest room.

I realized that we were getting much more done when I was posting our schedule every week, so here's our hopes for the week:

Friday: Lay hardwood in hall. Second coat on guest bedroom.
Paint coat on front wall in hallway.

Saturday: Lay hardwood in guest room. Second coat on
front wall in hallway. Clean up :)

Wednesday: Hang door to master bath. Lay remaining tiles in
laundry and master bath.

Thursday: Lay hardwood in office. Work on tiling downstairs.

Friday: Lay hardwood in hallway. Work on tiling downstairs.



Saturday: Lay hardwood in master bedroom. Work on tiling
downstairs.

Monday: Lay hardwood in master bedroom. Work on tiling
downstairs.

I'm a happy girl... :)

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

The Stairs ... With Treads!

Wow - what a day! When we came home this afternoon after work the stair guy (we should really find out his name!) had all the risers and treads on the stairs. It looks so nice!

There's not much else to say ... I'm enjoying having real stairs :)

The Stairs ... Before

Here is a picture of the stairs before the stair company started work on them ... as well as a picture of our balusters that we've come to know pretty well as we applied two coats of polyurethane to them.




The batteries on our camera died this weekend, but I'll try and get some pictures as soon as we get them replaced of how the work is progressing.

I'm getting sleepy ...

We are definitely not used to working as hard or long on the house as we did last night (unlike in the early days!), and my bleary eyes this morning are evidence of this fact. We got the wood for the stairs on Tuesday night, and after we got home at 9:30 we worked until 11 getting stands made for the balusters and sawhorses.

Last night we got right to work after supper finishing the pieces for the stairs. It's very easy to do, and you can sit and listen to tv or music while you do it, but it's very time-consuming. We worked until 1 a.m. and managed to get a coat of poly on: 86 balusters (yes, I was keeping track! - only 18 left), all 15 treads top and under the nosings, the nosing around the top of the stairs, half of the skirt boards, and all the handrail (except a couple of small S-turn pieces). As we had to get up at 5 this morning we decided we should head to bed at that point. Tonight's plan is to get the first coat on everything we didn't get done last night and then sand what we finished last night so it's ready for a second coat. Hopefully we can get a bit more sleep tonight, too. I don't think I'll make it tomorrow otherwise!

It is very interesting to maneuver downstairs through all the stair pieces as they dry - I'll try and get a picture tonight!

Finally!

You may remember a few weeks ago, when I actually kept this blog up-to-date, that I mentioned that a guy was coming to tile our tub
surround. Well … that guy ended up not working out (Mom always said if I can’t say anything nice … ;) ) so we finally got someone else to come
out today. This guy was a bit more expensive, so to save a bit of money we decided we would grout it ourselves.

You may also remember that I said our wood stairs place said we would get the pieces for our stairs in “lots of time” to get them finished before they come to install them next Monday, June 12th … Well, we finally called today after not hearing from them for a few weeks, and apparently “lots of time” translates to 6 days. Do they realize that we have day jobs?? Anyway, if anyone reading this is really bored, we’ll have about 100 balusters at our house tomorrow to get three coats of poly on before next Monday … ? Or, if balusters aren’t your style, can we interest you in some handrail, nosing, or treads? lol. After tonight that will obviously be our focus for the next week.

We have done a minimal amount of work on the house as of late for some reason. I finally got the guest bedroom primed on Saturday. We also got 4 coats of varathane on our bed and put the mattress back in its rightful place last night. Our bedroom looks so much bigger without two queen-sized beds set up!

A friend at church loaned us his pneumatic flooring nailer the other day, so we’ll have that to get started right away on the hardwood floor once the stairs are in. Exciting!