Hey, Have You Moved Into Your House Yet?

No.

It’s not ready yet. But I work on it. A lot. So here’s an update and some proof!

Warning: those who find D.I.Y. construction boring need not read further. For the rest of you remodel geeks, follow me!

Dad, being a woodworking ninja, decided after much deliberation to give his little girl the next best thing to a pony – level floors. My floors are a blog unto themselves. After removing the very silly wall that separated the kitchen and what is now generously being referred to as “the dining area”, the sloping of the floor (in many directions) was pretty substantial. Being the light-hearted, easy-going soul that I am, I was willing to let it be its funky, sloped self, but Dad wanted it done right. And it was basically up to him, because I don’t know how to do all that shims-on-joists-laser-level goodness.

So here’s some exposition on the floors; The original flooring in most of my house was constructed with these extremely long solid planks of heart pine. These puppies run wall to wall across whichever room they are in.Pretty cool, eh? They are currently not in he best condition, but they will hopefully be restored to magical beauty after dad and I put them through a little process of leveling, planing, installing, staining and sealing. No biggie. I’m getting some new flooring to try and match this stuff. My final fantasy is that I will have floors that look like a little some thing like these beauties.

I know, lighting, blah blah. These are probably all hickory, or white pine or ash or something, but whatever. I fought orangey-red floors for years in my Brooklyn apt., and I will be damned if I find myself in that sweet-and-sour sauce colored hell again.

Something I am mucho pleased with is the way the pine walls in the bathroom have turned out. I got a ton of tongue and groove pine siding which I installed using a little chop saw and a nail gun. Ahhh. Power tools.

The lighting makes it difficult to really see what’s going on here, but this is the unfinished siding after the initial phase of installation.

That ventilation pipe btw, is going to be “boxed out” and some built-in shelves will be installed.  I did a test of a couple of different stains, Pratt & Lambert “White Ash/Pastel Base” and Zar “Country White”;

The right is an unstained piece of the pine siding for reference. The middle piece has one coat of each stain, (the Pratt & Lambert on the bottom being the whiter of the two) and the piece on the left has 2 coats on either end. I didn’t see any noticeable difference between one coat or two.

I went with the Pratt & Lambert, and after much labor intensive brushing and rubbing in, I must say I’m pretty happy with it. 

Again, it’s difficult to really see in these pictures, the direct light from the window makes it look uneven and discolored which I assure you it is not. Hopefully you can see the difference. Can’t wait to get this room finished and do a proper “before and after”, maybe with a real girl camera which I never seem to have with me…

The next item in the mid-way progress report is the front walkway. Last week I gave myself a break on the “just get the interior done” game plan and decided to work on what I assumed was my little brick path. It looked so sad and overgrown. 

It had just rained, so the dirt was coming up nice and easy. I started kicking at the dirt and realized there were way more bricks than I previously thought. Thus began 7 hours straight of digging in the dirt, which apparently was such nice dirt that my mother bagged it up to take home for her garden. 

I saved as many as I could, but I fear it was a worm genocide. The Robins were circling all day. Finally, after giving myself a giant blister, I had uncovered all this;Yesss. Like an Archaeological dig on my front lawn. Now I am going to continue painting my room with Swiss Coffee.

Besos,

=—>