Floors down

The pine floors installed. Notice also the woodstove is now set on the slate hearth. We'll get around to hooking it up soon. Oh yes, we also built a somewhat more expansive bottom step spilling out into the living space

Adam hard at work

The floor in process

Jake's tile work grouted and nearly done

Adam has been back up to help us out for the last two days and he and I managed to get the flooring down on the first floor. Due to some supply issues we went with 2" nails on the first floor instead of the 2 1/2" nails that Nancy and I used on the second floor. It was striking (no pun intended) how much easier the smaller nails were to nail in. Also, in a blessing from on high, the span of the main area of the living space on the first floor turns out to be just under sixteen feet wide and this allowed us to install our large stack of sixteen foot pine planking with no joints whatsoever on the first floor. I wish I could say I planned it, but I didn't -- it just worked out that way.

The next job for me is to set all the nails on both floors, which means hammering them with a tool called a nail set that submerges the nail heads roughly an eighth-inch below the finished the surface. This will make things good for next week when the floor sanding/finishing crew arrives to polish off the job.

Working alongside Adam and me today was Jake who is nearly done with the bathroom tiling project. The last remaining detail is to caulk the corner joints and then we are free to hook up the all the fixtures and call it a working bathroom. Maybe that'll happen this weekend?