Spring

Over Easter weekend Eric, Emil and Skip finished up the wood flooring and finished installing and trimming out the newels. The flooring finishers came on Tuesday and started sanding the floors. They should be complete Friday. Eric decided to take off the non-rainy days this week to work on siding. So far the weather has been good enough. Monday was pretty brisk especially with the wind. Tuesday was warmer, but it was still a bit gusty. Here's some mildly complicated scaffolding. What this picture doesn't show is the little bit of sway in the scaffolding and lift due to the wind.One less pink and blue side of the house!

The Maple Affair

Before we had decided on almost anything else, Eric and I found out we had a passion for maple flooring and boxed newels. This week we are seeing the results of this romance.
Pieces to three puzzles.

One of three completed puzzle.

We got our flooring from Lumber Liquidators. It was over $1 less a square foot than anywhere. The quality of the wood has been very good so far. If you do order it online and pick it up in store, make sure you pick everything up in one trip or don't sign anything! Skip forgot the 6.5 foot bullnose piece because we forgot to mention it to him. The store accused us of picking it up and lying about it when I called to say we didn't get it. We needed the piece, so Skip went in to buy another "8 foot piece" they just happened to have in stock. (Unfinished maple is all special order.) The guy at the store was nice enough to insist Skip take the (6.5 foot) piece for free...
The flooring is installed over 15# felt paper. They sell a noise reduction underlayment, but since we don't have bedrooms underneath we didn't think it was worth the additional cost.

We went with the 3 1/4 inch wide plank. There are 44 rows across the kitchen and dining room. If we went with the 2 1/4 inch wide board which is more typical for unfinished it would have added 20 rows of time, staples and labor.
One step closer to getting my own room!

Are we done yet?

Saturday, Eric put up most of the trim upstairs except the aprons and around the stairs. Elena grew out of her cute white hat, so we had to upgrade. This one will hopefully fit next year.Eric and Skip are cutting a Rita requested bead in the skirt board for the stairs. Routing MDF works good except for the copius amount of sticky dust. At close up in HD, you might notice a tiny bit fuzzier edges on routed MDF than on routed solid wood, so you just have to be a little mindful where you use it if that's important to you.
Eric spent the day Sunday planing rough sawn wood that will be used for the newels and the wood mantel surround. We got all the maple for the 3 box newels and poplar for the fireplace for less than the price of one prebuilt boxed newel. Of course it helps Skip has the tools Eric needs to work with rough sawn wood. The poplar is suppose to paint better. After painting a handful of of pine doors and jambs (Skip has done a lot of the doors) and poplar sills, I'd agree. Here is Eric taking a break so I can play with stain.You can't beat 29 cent stain sample packs with a display that shows the stains on maple wood. Hmm Hmm Hmmm Which to choose?
Are we done yet?

Do I need an apron for that stool?

Don't worry. This is isn't an article about diapers. Our castle has a moat in the spring!
We started using Kilz high gloss white on all the interior trim and doors, but it seems to set up too quick thus easily leaving deep brush marks. Kilz is typically rated pretty high however gloss paints are not rated. We are switching to Behr's high gloss tomorrow to see if we have any better luck since their semi-gloss is also high rated.When I saw the first piece of casing around a door I was a little hesitant, but the casing looks really neat with the stools. The stool is the bottom window sill extension piece. Eric finally got to use his 2006 Christmas present, a router table, to make them. (Unfortunately, Santa isn't crazy and didn't bring Eric a router for the router table, so of course we borrowed Skip's router.) The apron is the inverted casing beneath it.
9 bullnose tiles and some grout short of finished. Eric decided to use the bullnose for the curb instead of the field tiles so the rest are on order...I think I'm interupting something.

A Trip Down Cheddar Haus Lane

These were taken last week. The view is awesome from the top. Maybe in the spring I'll take a panorama. I got stuck 20 feet from the top of the hill in the van during a slicker snowfall. All I needed was a little push from Skip and Eric to get going. That's what I get for being too careful and going too slow with eight 5 gallon buckets of primer in the back. The Cheddar Haus Drive is at the bottom just before the next big hill.