Halloween and Hardwood

After a productive demo weekend, we had a weekend where we just did some little things...and ordered our hardwood. It came Sunday and we have to let it acclimate for a few weeks before we can begin installation.

We got about 30 boxes of hardwood and some sound/vapor barrier to put down under the hardwood. We copied what Karen and Steve have and got Brazilian Cherry (imitation is the most sincere form of flattery :)). This type of hardwood darkens when exposed to sunlight, and we got to see what Karen and Steve's looked like after it was darkened and we loved it. So installation should start sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's when the real fun will start! 

 

 My parents are coming down this weekend to help out with removing the cabinets and granite counter tops, as well as removing the rest of the second sub-floor, so more updates will follow.


Until then, here are some pictures of our house decorated for Halloween. We decided to go with a Costco pack of full size Snickers bars this year, and so far, we have only had 10 trick-or-treaters, so, it looks like we will have tons of leftovers!


The picture below is of IronBabyFishRider, which is something that we inherited from Aunt Joanne and we decorate him for every holiday. My grandma found this iron fox and gave it to us for Christmas last year, so we have taken to decorating her for every season as well.  Its been a fun tradition that we have started.

  Happy Halloween! D&L

Phase 2: Demo, Let the Fun begin!

After a few weekends of being out of town, we were able to start the demo work on our project. 

First we exposed the back side of the wall that we are going to knock down in order to see what we were working with in terms of electrical wiring. Luckily we didn't find any surprises there. There is no plumbing through this wall, which makes things easier for us. 


 We had an electrician come to the house to work on some other things, so while he was there, we were able to talk to him about our plans for lighting with respect to our project. He was able to look at the wiring in the wall, and let us know what would need to be done before completely removing the wall.

Next, we got to work on removing the tile from the kitchen floor, which was not an easy task. We got started on Friday night (date nights have certainly taken on a new meaning :)). 

Using a chisel, we loosened up the grout and there were able to pop the tiles out. 

We removed about 6 tiles on Friday night and with one of us working at a time, it took about an hour to get that much done. It did not make us look forward to dealing with the rest of the flooring.

Saturday, we borrowed a second chisel from Karen and Steve, changed our technique and started on opposite ends of the kitchen. We were able to get the remaining tiles up by that evening, and only sustained some minor cuts along the way. 

When the tile was installed, instead of putting a cement backboard down, they put a second sub-floor down on top of the existing sub-floor. The second sub-floor was secured with what seemed like a millions screws and nails, and we couldn't get all the screws out because of the thinset, so it would involve some brute strength to get this off. Thankfully, we have Dan for that!

Steve stopped by to bring over some tools for us to borrow and to brainstorm some ideas for how to remove the second subfloor. They were able to get the majority of the second sub-floor off, which was a huge help. I snuck in and snapped some pictures while they were working.

We still have some portions of the second sub-floor to remove that are around the fridge and sink cabinets, as well as the cabinets around the stove. Next step will be to remove the cabinets and counter tops from around the stove.

Now that the tile has been removed, this whole project seems more real! Here we go!

D&L

Concrete Floor Staining Project

The first big project we tackled in our house was staining the concrete floor in our family room. There was this hideous green carpeting in there, so we knew we wanted to get rid of that (unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that). When we pulled a corner of the carpet up to see what was underneath, it was not old hardwood like I had hoped, but a concrete slab. Our basement is not under our entire house, but just one half of it, so the other half is on a concrete slab. We had been thinking that we wanted to do hardwood in that room, but we would have to build up a sub-floor which seemed to be more of a hassle than what it was worth to us. We looked at some engineered hardwood, but we didn't find anything that we were crazy about.

One Sunday morning while watching a show on HGTV, we watched them stain a concrete floor in a kitchen and it looked awesome when it was done. Dan did some research on the whole process, and we decided to give it a shot. We were going to rip the carpet anyway, so if we didn't like how it looked, we could always cover it with carpet or laminate.

We ordered all the products we needed and had a Friday night rip out the carpet date night.

The concrete had a sealant put on the surface, so in order to get the stain to absorb into the concrete, the surface of the concrete had to be sanded down.  Dan got his orbital sander and about 400 sanding pads and went to work. Of course, he made sure to wear the proper safety gear:

Once the sanding was complete, which took the better part of a week, the surface needed to be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed. Then we were ready to stain. The thing about staining concrete is that you have no idea what the color is actually going to be until it is sealed. The stain reacts with the concrete, so depending on any impurities and the type of concrete used, the color can be different in different areas. The stain that we chose was called Cola, which was a reddish brown, however, when it was sprayed on, it looks fluorescent green. As you can see from the pictures. Dan was able to keep the TV plugged in throughout the whole project, so that made things a little easier!

We did two coats of the dye on the floor and Dan pooled the dye in some ares to get more of a contrast in color. There are so many different techniques and color combinations that people have done when staining concrete that look really awesome. After the stain dried, we had to seal it, and the sealant that was recommended was a polymer sealant. Thankfully we did this on one of those rare weekends in February where it was 65 degrees out, because once the sealant was on the floor, we couldn't even be in the house. The fumes were so strong, it took a good week for our house to air out.

Before sealant and wax

After sealant and wax

We loved how the floor came out. Dan put a wax coating on before we moved the furniture in, and the floor will have to be resealed and re-waxed every couple of years. We then put in some baseboards and painted the room.

I said "we" a lot regarding this project, but Dan really did the majority of it. I just helped with the demo and the painting. Dan did all the floor prep and staining, cut and installed all the baseboards. He's quite the handyman!

D&L