Where might we be after 5 weeks you ask?

Week 5 just ended on this project and its starting to take its toll on our home! For the most part we are OK, its just the disorder adding to the chaos of bb2 (baby Beley 2) on the way that is starting to wear!

But we persevere on and the end is closer than it has ever been.

The week started with the stove and island needing to get out of the way. Thankfully Jim came over and helped me move the island, and I was able to get behind the stove and start working. After that I could move to the finishing rows of the kitchen/family room. I was hoping to be into the sun room by the time the weekend was over (Natalia I am sure was hoping I would be done by the time the weekend was over).

Well, I was into the sunroom by the time the weekend was over. Here are some highlights of this past week. Click the pictures to link to the picasa album, there are many more pictures in there (including the starting pictures).

From Floors Project

4/18 Sun of Weekend 4

Man...it seems like we are finally getting close! Close to half way! ha! This weekend I got a lot of floor down. It wears on your back, bending over slightly to hit the blind nailer takes it toll on a young man like me (as I approach my 33rd birthday). Enjoy the pictures, it's been challenging and fun so far. The house being a mess is starting to wear on us quite a bit, but hopefully the pay off will be worth it!

The Right Foundation

We decided to get some writing in on the subfloor before putting the final touches down! Here are some bible verses and signings we added to the project in hopes that our foundation is in the right hands!

4/17 - Saturday of Week 4 Video

Some video from weekend #4.

4/17 - Saturday of Week 4

I finally made it down the longest stretch, from fireplace to garage door! It was a good day!

4/15 - Some closer shots

Here are some closer shots around the cabinets and thresholds. Natalia made some great points about practicing on someone else's house before tackling such a large project! :)

So, if anyone wants to learn, let us know, but you might have to lay a few rows of floor!





Here is a spot where if you look closely, old floor vs. new floor. The old floor is 6 years old and gets plenty of sunlight. Maybe one day they will match!

4/11 - Video: Some Floor is Down!

Week 3 - 4/13 Behind the Refrigerator

After making some great progress this weekend I got aggressive. There was something in my way that had to get done along my starter wall, the refrigerator! So, out it came and I tackled this area in one night. It was the most intense cutting work and I had to work into the wall, which meant that I would have to do some tricky cutting and laying out. Not to mention, as you get closer to the wall, the blind nailer is useless.

At the end of the day though, it was done, and I put the refrigerator back, oh, and YES, it fit beneath the upper cabinets!

Weekend Three- Floors are starting to go down!!! :)

We finally have some floors down!!!! We are no where near done but seeing the new floor going down is definitely encouraging for Rick since getting to this point has been quite the learning process so far. By Friday Rick has all the demo done which was a huge feat. All of the old floor and grimy carpet that I hadn't been thrilled with for the last 3.5 years was gone.

On Saturday Rick was about to start laying some floor and as has been par for the course with this project he hit another set back and needed yet another tool! The circular hand saw we had was just not going to cut it, literally, on this kind of job. Thankfully we are blessed with some handy friends and family that have generously lent us their tools so we didn't have to invest in yet another tool and spend more money. Thanks to our friend Butch and Rick's brother Jim who hooked us up with some table saws that we will put to good use for the next couple of weeks.

Ryan even helped out today as Rick got into his groove and starting banging away on those floors. We were very impressed with how strong Ryan was and the fact that he could hit the mallet on the blind nailer and nail several nails into the wood. So all in all about 10 rows of floor went down (yeah!!!!) and they look amazing!

I have to thank Rick for putting up the videos on the blog as well as all the hard work he's been doing recently!

Demo Week 2 (Easter Weekend)

IT was a long and tiring weekend. After celebrating Easter and the Resurrection it was time to work. Normally I wouldn't advocate working on Easter Sunday but time is short before bb2 (baby beley 2) gets here!

Check the photo album for all the pictures from this week of demolition. Here is a brief video recap:

Week Two, but who's counting?

Easter weekend gave Rick and my dad an opportunity to get lots more demo done which meant lots more dust and dirt for me to deal with. I prematurely started cleaning and learned my lesson when the kitchen went into even more disarray.

The fridge is out of the way and the floor under there got removed, the island with it's heavy granite counter got moved out of the way as well. 95% of the old floor is up so I'm hoping we're in the last week or so of demo at this point. My dad also let Rick borrow

another tool that has made it easier for him to get up close to the cabinets which is great!

The big question at this point is will the floors be done before our newest family member arrives? The one thing I do know is that Lucy, our dog, and Ryan, our 5 year old are losing patience with this project taking their favorite playmate away from them.

The other good thing that I see coming out of all this aside from beautiful floors is that I'm actually cleaning the cabinets that I haven't wiped down in quite a while and my next task is to purge and reorganize all the cabinets and drawers which I've definitely needed to do for quite some time. So in the next couple of weeks I'll post some pics of some of that reorg too!

Photo Album

In case you crave MORE MORE and MORE photos, I am keeping my picasa album up to date with the pictures as I go.

Demo Work Proves Challenging (Video)

Some demo progress, getting up the vinyl floor proves difficult, but seems doable. (I hadn't gotten to the cabinets yet at this point!)

Introduction Video - Project Scope

Here is a taste of what the area looks like in real life. I took this video right before we started demo work.