Ready to finish floors

Jeremy setting nails last week

We've been busy preparing for the floor finishing crew that arrives tomorrow morning to sand and then polyurethane the pine floors we put down last week. The most time intensive aspect of getting ready has been setting the nails. It's just a lot of work and the kicker is that when the finishing guys showed up this morning to drop off some equipment they said we had to set them deeper then I thought we would, so we had to go back over it all this afternoon. Luckily for me Randy showed up to help out and made a long hard job manageable.

Otherwise, we are ready. I'll be back to working on the kitchen cabinets this week as access through the house will be pretty limited until the floors are done, which should be Thursday sometime. This means Nancy and I'll be living in the yurt again for the week.

Wide Pine Floors

Pulling the boards in through the second floor bedroom window

The expertly stickered stack of floor boards on the first floor

From the archives: This picture shows the delivery truck that brought a big lumber order, including our floor wood back in September 2009.

Today our friends Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas came up to help move the pine floor boards from the basement to the first and second floors. We've been storing them for over a year now since we received them along with the massive lumber delivery for the roof framing in the fall of last year.

To move the lumber to the upper floors we each had our jobs: Nancy and Sally and Silas pulled the 16' long boards up through a window on the second floor as Jeremy and I carted them up from the basement and positioned them at the window. Meanwhile Anda stickered each board as they came in. At some point I broke off and started churning out more 3/4" square stickers to keep up with demand while Jeremy continued moving the boards. It was a big effort but felt effortless with the help of such great folks. I had pleasure imagining Anda telling friends at school tomorrow that she stickered wood and her friends saying "What's that mean?" and her being able to tell them.

Beyond this, Nance and I have been quite busy painting, prepping and such. I've been working steadily on lowering the floor of the first floor bathroom shower floor by three inches. Its turned into quite a project. But more about that later.

Tomorrow I go pick up our bathroom tile order.

Meanwhile in the basement

Jeremy, Joe and Aaron in the midst of moving the I-beam down into the basement

Jeremy

This is the interior of the steel supply house. The large orange thing over the racks is a crane that moves on rails to move massive pieces of steel for cutting

We take a brief moment here away from all the finish work upstairs to address a project happening in the basement.

Its been apparent for a while that the first floor has a bit of spring to it. Not enough that would be a problem on any sort of practical level, but enough that you feel the footsteps of someone walking past as you are doing something; enough that I thought it worth reinforcing under the long span of floor joists running under the living/dining area. The solution is to place a beam under the middle point of the span to effectively halve the span of each joist.

I called up the local steel supply house and ordered up a steel I-beam that is 6" high by 6" wide by 23' long. This thing weighs 25lbs. per foot, coming to 575 pounds for our piece; the delivery consisted of unceremoniously flipping it off the edge of the truck bed onto the ground. In order to get it in the basement I had Aaron and Jeremy come over to help Joe and I manoeuvre it, which we did with the ever-amazing garden cart that acted as a set of wheels under the center of the beam as we rolled it to the back hatchway. From there we were able to sort of slide it down into the basement and then move it around on some 2" wooden dowels that Aaron brought over. All told the whole moving project went reasonably easily and safely. Joe borrowed a roll-able lift that acts pretty much like a hand cranked fork lift. We'll use this tomorrow to lift the beam into place and install support posts at both ends and in the middle.

Windows go in

The supervisor wondering why I'm taking a photo and not working

Prepping the window openings

A window in

Jeremy and Sally holding the big window just before installation

The big window in place

Yesterday and today we've been installing windows and its going very well. As if on cue, the weather seems to suddenly feel raw and cold, with a persistent wind--a fine motivation to get those windows in! Its snowing this evening as I write this.

We started in the back of the house, on the first floor, with some of the smaller windows and have been steadily moving around to the front of the house.

Even the smallest of these windows are pretty heavy, so it takes some concerted planing to move them and get them into the openings. Each window opening requires a careful flashing detail before installation.

In our living room portion of the house we have a window that is something of a picture window that measures 6' x 6'. This creature weighs a ton and we knew we'd need some help. A phone call to Jeremy resulted in Sally, Jeremy, Anda, and Silas showing up to give us a hand. With all of them plus Nancy, Joe, and myself, we were able to carefully manoeuvre the massive unit into place. Getting that window in was a big hurdle and the rest are manageable by comparison. We'll polish off the the rest of the first floor tomorrow and maybe make a stab at the doors.

Every new aspect of the house brings a moment of anticipation and curiosity. Will we like it? Does it look like I thought it would? I have to say I'm really pleased with the windows; they look really good. Joe said they looked "old fashioned", which I took as a positive indicator of what I was hoping for.

Big thanks to Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas for showing up to help when we needed a few extra hands!