Whew! My goodness...I've been so busy I haven't even had time to share! Sorry 'bout that. We've moved along pretty well in the last few days completing the vital parts of the reno. We did have to send the right and left side of the counter tops back to the store--they were too long. Now, I'm not going to fault anyone, but our measurements were pretty precise; I think it was just an oversight. It happens. At least they were too long and not too short. Easy fix (I hope). We just have to wait another week to get them back before we can put them together.
Anyway, here are the next few steps that we have accomplished so far and there are many more to come...
Here are a couple of pictures of each side of the floor where we thought there was the dreaded black mold. Thank God we were wrong--just stained sub floor...
We had removed the worst part of the flooring replacing it with a sheet of 3/4" plywood until the floor installers came back. They cut out and tore up the linoleum covered lauan and we worked on the dry rotted floor later that night to ready it for them to put in the nice new flooring the next day, but more about that in a bit.
In some of the above pictures you can see that there is plastic covering the wall. The hubby cut that back and we bought some green board drywall to cut and fill in the space.
Looking better already, don't you think? Next, the hard work was about to commence. We had to rip out what should have been a 4x8 foot section of that terrible floor. We got out the pry-bars and hammers and got to work...
Some of it was rather easy to tear out because it was so dry-rotted, and some was really nailed down with 20 year old nails. And that floor underneath? It's 116 years old...
Looks pretty good for it's age. It held up where the "new" floor did not.
Then we had to fill in the newly made hole with 3/4" tongue and groove sub floor. Noah had used the circular saw to cut the sections of the floor that did not want to budge, and we ripped that out with the pry-bars, but we were not able to get it to a 4x8 size. So, he just cut the plywood to size: a perfect 4x6 foot piece. It fit like a glove, and he got high praise from the carpenters!
Noah: 1 Hideous floor: 0
Here's a candid shot of how we work. I was snapping pics of him working and I got this. He aimed the screw gun at me and made a "Thbbbffft" sound. Nice. At least we weren't fighting.
Here are the precise cuts the floor installer cut around the plumbing. Now, usually you really would not want to put your bottom cabinets on top of your flooring (I've been told), but we had not had the bottom cabinets in yet, so he didn't know where to run the floors up to (as in up to the edge of the bottom of the base cabinets), does that make sense? I asked him about this and he said it's really because they (Installers/product specialists) worry about the weight distribution sitting on the floors. But, he said my refrigerator was a monolith, and the cabinets are distributed evenly and the counters aren't heavy stone, so he was not worried. If he's not, then I'm not. Besides, the work is guaranteed and under warranty (not that I ever want to go through this ever again. Ever.) and I love the thought of everything sitting on an extra layer between the basement and my cabinet bottoms. After smelling the musty basement air rising up from above for all these years, I'm grateful.
Another angle of the cuts around the plumbing. That looks gross, but it's just glue...
All nice and clean. A big improvement from a few days earlier.
Here is a shot of our back room. It's the addition part of the house added in 1989. It holds our laundry room and bathroom (that remodel is for another day). It was the final room to have the floors installed. They used the same 3/4" tongue and groove sub floor to level the floors out to each height difference, and got to work.
Here is a shot of the kitchen from the back room...
And here is the finished product. Of all the boxes of flooring, that is all we have left. Always keep your leftovers for repairs, if ever you should have one. It will save a trip to the store later, plus, you never know when the manufacturer will discontinue that particular product.
Finished. And I love it. We have since moved into fixing the sink (even though the counters are not all together--we'll just settle it in for good when they do come in), picking our house colors (finally!), and painting the living room (at least). We will start to bring in our stuff from the storage pod this week and weekend, paint the foyer and back room and hopefully start on clearing out our bedroom and bathroom for the next phase of the "Remodel." Oh, and we want to visit Noah's grandma, too.
It's going to be a very busy weekend...
Thanks for reading here, and have a great weekend, yourselves!
Nanette
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