Wordy Wednesday {Flooring Tip}

We have installed hardwood flooring three times. The first time was in north Houston years ago. The second time was in the main portion of this house. Now, we have finished installing flooring in the attached garage which is now the studio. (Pictures in another blog post coming soon.) It is no longer a garage. So, I need to stop calling it by that name and just call it "my room".

The one thing I dislike is wastage. In case you do not know, I am frugal. Sometimes, I am extreme in the frugal department. I just hate the thought of wasting good flooring and filling up the landfill. It makes me feel ill. I mean, it is like throwing away good money. Correct? After all, we paid good money for the boards.

These are some end pieces that Dan cut. We usually lay flooring down in one direction and most of the time, Dan must cut the last piece so that it would fit. Many people would just cut the ends of pieces of flooring and toss that which is not used. Not us. We reuse them.

In this case, the ends can be reused in the beginning of the next row to be laid down. When we did the main portion of this house, we often ended up using the cut off pieces to fill up a row of flooring. It all depends on which direction you lay down the boards.

By the way, This is not easy as I make it out to be. Decisions, decisions, decisions occur at this step. We have to make sure the seams are at least six inches apart. And, there must be at least two boards between seams that might line up. Yes, it might seem complicated; but, once you get into the rhythm, it is not all that hard to do.

All glued up. It is final! There is no going back! Ha!

Let me see if I can make this clearer as I fear using just pictures would not make sense to y'all. Sometimes, using graphics makes things a heck of a lot clearer.

Choose cut off pieces to use. Lay them down.

Done!

Wordy Wednesday (Got OCD?)

The flooring we bought comes in all kinds different lengths. It is unbelievable how many different lengths exist. I tried for awhile to just eyeball what we need and grab a board here and there and try it out for size. This eventually drove me batty. So, while Dan was working on putting down a portion of the flooring inside the closet, I organized the remaining boards.

Can You Say OCD?

Once they were all lined up and organized by lengths, I was a much happier camper. From hereon, I used the measuring tape and eyeballed about what length the next board should be as we do not want the joints to be close together. I would then go and grab the board that was closest to the length I wanted and drop it down in place. When the supply got low, I would open up another box and add more boards to the lineup.

Dan laughed when I started my madness (of organizing and lining up the boards); but, he noticed my new method of laying down the flooring was much quicker than before. So, I think, in the end, he approved of my madness.

Wordy Wednesday {A Helping Hand}

We had started putting down the flooring and we needed something with weight. I thought of the coins Dad left us. They are heavy and they would work. So, I dug them out and took them into the room. While taking a break and surveying all we have done, I looked at the coins and thought to myself, "Dad is still here giving us a helping hand".

It has been over five years and yet, I still see (and think of) reminders of him. I had to take a picture and while taking one, Dan was curious and asked me if I was taking a picture of the coins. So, I told him what went through my mind and he smiled.

Several hours later, something happened that got us both staring in confusion and then in amusement. I even laughed.

Dan had stacked two containers of coins and the top one can tumbling down. A thought crossed my mind and then I said it out loud. "Dad, are you trying to tell us something?" This caused Dan to laugh which is a rare thing to hear from him. That alone made my day.

Wordy Wednesday {Update on House}

All this custom cutting is slowing the process down. This is the hall closet. We have finished the hall closet, master bedroom closet and bedroom #3 closet. We still have another hall closet, the linen closet and bedroom #3 closets to do!

On a positive note, the flooring in all the rooms are done. And, we have started moving stuff over to the new house. We took a truck (F 150 size) load of boxes over last weekend. Dan wanted to move some boxes out of the office to make room for dismantling his huge computer desk workstation. We just did not have room in the tiny rental house to put it all. So, we decided to start moving crap. It will certainly make the moving costs lower by moving some stuff ourselves.

We'll be taking over more stuff this weekend and this time, it will be some of my stuff from the sewing room that I don't want the movers to handle. We will also be doing some yard work in addition to finishing up the flooring in the closets this weekend.

I am still packing. Yes, I am slow as cold molasses. But, I am finally getting excited because I can see the end is near! Hurray! I will post whenever I can; but, no guarantees. I have a HUGE pile of links for a Link Roundup (Saturdays). I just have not found the time to do that as it involves much more intensive editing work on my part. So, the links just keep on piling up. Ha!

I also have a huge pile of pictures to go through including the ones from our camping trip. Speaking of pictures, my card for the camera got full over this past weekend which tells me I have been lazy! Fortunately, I had another backup card to use.

Until next time,

Piece,

Thursday's Thoughts

Let's see, What has happened since my last Thursday's Thoughts post?

• I went to a quilt show. I posted about it here.


• The flooring at the house is slowly getting done. We estimated that it will take us a weekend to complete a bedroom. Three bedrooms equal three weekends. So, I added a weekend making it four weekends total. This means that we should be finished just before Labor Day weekend. Is that being realistic? Or is it too optimistic? Ha!
Dan adding the last piece of flooring in the Den

• I really love the flooring! The above picture doesn't really do it justice. I am glad we are doing this because it is so much warmer than the hard cold tile.


• The pain-the-butt hallway is almost done. There are seven doorways that Dan has to fussy cut the flooring slowing the process down tremendously.


• Speaking of fussy cut, Dan asked me what I meant by that term. After I explained the term to him, he smiled in amusement and said "Men do not fussy cut. They custom cut.". This made me bust a gut! I can't help it if I have quilting terms stuck in my brain and use them in reference to other things besides quilting. Ha!

• We got more done than indicated in this picture. Do you see that door way down at the end of the hallway? We have flooring put down all the way up there. But, since we are working from left to right, the flooring isn't down from the first door on the right (which you can barely see in this picture) towards the end of the hallway.


• The door at the end of the hallway is to a closet. Both doors on the right side are to bedrooms. The two doors you can see with doorknobs on the left are closets. There are two open doors on the left side further up that goes into a guest bathroom and the master bedroom.


• We should call this "The House of Many Doors" instead of the "Ranch House". Ha!
  "The House of Many Doors" sounds like a horror movie (or book). It shall remain the "Ranch House".


• I have not gotten much accomplished with other things such as packing. I got so exhausted that I started to feel sick Monday and had to rest Monday. And then, I woke up with a migraine on Tuesday. Headache lingered throughout Wednesday. So, I'm just trying to take it easy and gather up my strength for another busy hard weekend at the 'Ranch House'.


• I am planning to do some shopping for needed supplies for the 'Ranch House' and some groceries this morning before it gets real hot out there.


• I need to come up with some lunches besides the same o' boring ol' peanut butter and jelly or lunch meat sandwiches to take with us to the 'Ranch House'. Anyone have any suggestions for quick and easy meals? We have a refrigerator at the 'Ranch House'; so no worries about keeping things cold.


• Piece,

Thursday's Thoughts

Let’s see, what happened since my last Thursday’s Post. I did not post one last Thursday because there was not much to say.

By the way, my husband, Dan, posted about the demo with pictures two weeks ago. I believe I neglected to tell y’all. Here is the post. You will find a picture of me hard at work with a jackhammer removing thinset.

On the weekend of July 14th and 15th:

• We met my niece and her friend at EZ Restaurant located at the Alamo Quarry Market. I really enjoyed the visit with them both. The restaurant is wonderful with absolutely delicious food. We plan to go there every time we go to the Quarry.


• Since we were at the Alamo Quarry Market, we did a little shopping at Amy’s Hallmark which was perfect timing because it was the first day of the Keepsake Ornament premiere. We collect the Lionel Train Series. And yes, I do believe we have all the trains pictured at the link.


• We also shopped at Whole Food Market – my favorite place to shop for a few grocery staples. I discovered the 365 brand of cookies that tastes just like Oreos! I think Dan was in heaven because he had not had any for eons. It’s his favorite cookie. Note: I do not buy Oreos due to the HFCS (also known as “corn sugar”) content. I do not need the temptation of Oreos lying around. But these 365 cookies, they are an acceptable compromise!


• We only had Sunday (July 15th) to work on the house. I vacuumed up most of the dust and bits of tile from the den and hallway while Dan ripped up the carpet and baseboard in the Master Bedroom. We then filled up the few gouges made from our lack of experience with the jackhammer.

Filled Gouges Drying

{Do you see eyes and hands or mittens? I did. Yes, I know. I am weird.}

{P.S. This is actually in a bedroom where we discovered gouges underneath the carpet.}
For the life of me, I cannot remember what events occurred during the week after the weekend of July 14th. I do know that I struggled with depression. When I get into this sad state of affairs, I often neglect things and cannot remember events unless I write them down. I have not been writing down stuff like I should in eons. I really should start doing this again.

Anyway, on the weekend of July 22nd and 23rd:

• I finished vacuuming up the dust Saturday morning in the bedrooms. I did not want to be tracking all that stuff onto the flooring underlayment and the flooring themselves. Dan helped me with the kitchen after he was done doing whatever he was doing. The dust (from destroying tile and thinset and pulling up carpet) is evil and insidious getting in every nook and cranny.


• We laid down the flooring underlayment in the den. It was slow going; but, we got most of it done. By the way, we have pictures of the process; but, they really belong to Dan. You will have to keep an eye on Dan’s blog for those pictures.


• We started putting down the flooring. Let me tell you, the beginning is always the slowest part of this job. Once the flooring was established, the process went quicker.

Here I am taking a break

• A word of advice: If you do flooring yourself and want the process to go real fast, pick out flooring that has the same length. The flooring we chose has varying lengths; so, the process of laying them down goes a little more slowly due to a variety of factors including avoiding joints of the floor boards from lining up.


• Dan did not have the proper tools to fussy cut the floor boards with, which kind of sort of slowed us down. Shhhh, do not tell him I said this. Ha! Actually, he reads this blog. So, he is going to find out and will probably give me a light whack. I think it will be worth it because it is the truth. Ha!

Dan the man working out what to cut where

• When we finished up on Sunday night, we were just under halfway done in the den. We have so much more to do! It is going to take longer than we estimated to get the flooring done. But, that is okay, we are most likely still saving money by doing it ourselves instead of having someone do it for us. Dan figured out that it would cost a minimum of $3,000.00 to get it all put down. Yikes! And then, you also have the pride factor of doing it all yourselves.


• Dan ended up with sore knees. He actually bought some knee pads Saturday evening. I already had some knee pads for doing basting (quilting) work on the floor which is hard on your knees. They do really save your knees and are wonderful items to have on hand.


• I did end up with sores on the back of my knees from the straps of the knee pads. They hurt really bad and I could not see them very well. Dan said they looked like sunburned or chaffed skin. I woke up Sunday night with a stinging type of pain. On Monday evening, I had Dan take a picture of the one on my right knee (which was the worst one) simply because I was dying to see what they were really looked like.

• I was surprised to see that they were not as bad as they felt. This made me feel better about the sores. In the meantime, I have been racking my brain trying to come up with some kind of "knee sock" to protect our skin from the straps as I really do not want to wear jeans. No solution yet!


• We had an A/C guy come out Tuesday morning (July 24th). Sometime Sunday, the A/C shut off and it got really hot! I commented to Dan that I was getting very hot. I did not understand it and was feeling sick from the heat. Dan discovered it was 84 degrees! Yikes! And, the A/C was not running. For a while, we could not figure it out. Dan called an A/C company and left a message. And then, I noticed something flashing on the thermostat. It turned out the batteries were dead. We replaced the batteries and the A/C kicked on approximately 5 or 10 minutes later. We talked and decided to have the A/C company come out anyway and do an inspection along with a consultation on the garage (because we are going to convert it into a studio in the future). Anyway, while Dan talked with the A/C man, I had fun puzzling out more flooring to put down.


• I have been doing boring stuff this week like washing clothes, sheets, dishes and whatnot. I am actually looking forward to Saturday!


• Piece,