projects

Well the guest bath is laid, but not sealed or trimmed. The craft room is trimmed. We unloaded all the things from the master suite that we don’t use on a daily basis (of course, this still leaves a lot, like closet shelving units that reach the floor.) We ripped all the carpet, padding, tacks, and staples from the hall and have it prepped for floors.

Day 5 gols: seal the bathroom, lay Pergo in the hall and closet, trim the hall and closet.

We changed our plan a bit for today. Since we needed two people to place the floors in the craft room, and since we can’t fit two people in the bathroom, we traded those.

The craft room is finished except for some trim. (We bought all that was in stock a couple of days ago, so that may just have to wait.)

The bathroom is about half laid. That process is much slower not only because of all the cuts, but also because each row has to be glued. And, once the Pergo is laid, we’ll have to seal the entire floor to prevent water seepage.

Of course, we had a lot of help today from the feline members of the household. They worked hard holding down their “woobies” on our bed.

Day 4 goals: lay Pergo in the guest bath, seal guest bath, load craft room leaving access for missing trim, prep hallway, eat a real sit-down dinner, drink green beer.

Well, we laid a lot less floor today, but we still made very good progress. After discovering we purchased the wrong thickness of sub-floor material for the guest bathroom (water damage in that room had swelled the floor, so the thickness was deceiving), we made yet another trip to the hardware store. Emil spent the majority of the day working on the sub-floor in the bathroom and made it level.

Lori spent most of the day moving stuff from the craft room to the guest bedroom (since all the guest stuff was in the craft room, this took a long time). She also took advantage of that time to cull some of our book collection–since quitting school, she no longer has a need for so many text books–and a large part of her magazine collection. She resisted the temptation to sort through things as she was moving them from one room to another. It looks like it won’t be long before we have another garage sale.

This evening, while Emil started cutting Pergo to fit around the toilet, Lori stripped the craft room of it’s carpet, padding, carpet tacks, and other nasties!

Day 3 goals: Pergo, trim, and glue guest bath, finish final prep on craft room, Pergo craft room.

With a good set of prepping under our belts (Sunday, we planned and shopped. Monday and Tuesday evenings, we prepped and started learning how to work with the flooring materials), we had a very productive first day of installing new Pergo floors on the top level of our house. The guest room is now finished–complete with trim–and is ready to load back in! We also started on the guest bath and discovered some hidden water damage, so we have begun tearing out the sub-floor.

New Toys: Dremel set (with scads of accessories), compound miter saw, and knee pads!

Day 2 plans: load the guest room and craft room contents into the guest room, replace sub-floor in guest bath, lay Pergo and trim the guest bath, and prep the craft room. If we can reduce the number of trips needed to Lowe’s, we might just make it!

Thanks to Beth/Marc, Jenn/Scott, and Diane/Jonathan, we have decided that we can handle a major project in our home. We are replacing the flooring on the upper level of our house.

Last summer, we had an air-conditioning leak (thanks to a duh! construction mistake) that leaked water into our laundry room. A few weeks later, we noticed a cracked tile and found some water damage to the sub-floor. We’d been talking about removing all the carpet in our house, so we did some intial research on flooring and settled on laminate.
This February, we tried to get camping reservations for Spring Break, but had waited too long. All the campsites near us were full. So, Emil did a bunch of geometry and math, and we hit the hardware store for laminate flooring, bought planks, tools, and accessories. We also plan to re-paint the master bedroom, so it will be a big week–we get Wednesday through Friday off for Spring Break–of projects and remodeling.

We’re taking volunteer applications.