The Walls and Floors are Finished

All that's left is for me to move my furniture in.


(living and dining room)


(master bedroom)


(guest bedroom - new window treatments are first on my to-do list after I get back)


(office)

Floors Finished and Baseboards In

They finished the floors today. The last coat of polyurethane went on this morning, and the baseboards went in late this afternoon. My contractor left some soft drop cloths out for the painters when they do their touch ups tomorrow. I can't put my carpets down for a week, though.


(I'm not sure, but I think the high gloss white on the baseboard is slightly whiter than that on the trim).


(I'm really happy with the way it came out)


(here you can see the new connecting piece they made for the sliding glass door)


(And here's the master bedroom).

Coated

I'm not sure if this is one or two coats of polyurethane. I believe the last coat goes on tomorrow.






I'm going to talk to the floorer in the morning and find out. If everything works, I'll try to get the painters in to finish up this weekend. I also now have movers for next Tuesday. Hopefully the smell of the stain and polyurethane will pass by then (but it's pretty strong now).

Stained

They stained the floors this afternoon:


Since I can't walk on them yet, I can only photograph them from doorways.


They did a real nice job of cutting in the new wood to cover the area where the floor furnace was:

(Here's where they filled in the gap in the hallway).


(Here's where they filled in the gap in the living room).

The also added pieces to transition to the tiled floors, which are higher.

(this is between the kitchen and dining room)


(between the hallway and bathroom)

Tomorrow they start the three coats of polyurethane. I'm hoping that the touch up painting and the baseboards can all be done this weekend.

The Floors Look Great!

The good news: the wood on the floor is in excellent condition (at least according to the floorer).

I've very pleased with the way the floors look:

(The dining room)


(The living room)

It's such a dramatic change.


(The master bedroom)


(The guest room)

In the afternoon, I met with the floorer and we went through stain colors.

(from left to right: natural, nutmeg, golden brown, antique brown).

I chose natural, to highlight the good condition of the wood.

When I left they were filing in the area where the floor heater was. According to the floorer, the original wood was oddly milled, at only 2" in width. Tomorrow they stain and they hope to put on the third coat of polyurethane on Friday.

The bad news, however, is that depending on what my new home owner's insurance company says, I may have to replace the roof.

Painting Almost Done

The painting is almost done. Just one more coat of yellow in the living room and kitchen should cover up the underlying color.



I still can't believe how dark the paint colors were in here before.



All in all, I'm quite pleased with the way the colors came out in the living and dining room.



The bedrooms are all done. They painted the trim and doors yesterday.



The guest bedroom is now done, including the closet.


The hallway is done. I will replace the light fixture with a solar tube later.


The office is done:


The kitchen needs one more coat of yellow on the walls, and one more coat of white on the ceiling; the underlying mossy green is still peeking through.



Tomorrow, they start refinishing the floors.

Baseboard and Paint

Today, I had both contractors at the house: the painters continued to prime the walls, while the floorers prepared the cut ins for the door casements, and prepped the baseboards and painted them.



The walls and ceiling in two of the bedrooms are done. Here's the master (they still need to paint the trim, finish the floors, and install the baseboards):

The blue is a little brighter than I thought it would be.

Here's the guest bedroom, sans the bright yellow walls

(it's the same shade of paint, only the lighting is different).

Because the office gets so much light, the paint seems even brighter here.


Here's what the new baseboard will look like. I'm glad I went with the tallest version.


The painters have been sanding away rough spots from when they removed a closet and shifted the kitchen wall. They've also started to prime the kitchen walls and ceiling.

Prime

Work on the house proceeds apace.

On Monday they pulled out the palm tree and put in top soil in the planters. I noticed, however, that when I ran the sprinklers, the pipes in one are are leaking, and I suspect a major leak in the back planter.

I asked them to bring extra dirt for the garden. I still think it could use a bit more.


The painters came over today and began to prime the walls.

No more red in the dining room!


I've also picked the off-white color for the wainscoting and the ceiling.

They also primed the ceiling in the living room:


And they painted a priming coat in two of the three bedrooms:

Landscaping

Well, I've made progress on three fronts in landscaping.

First, the palm tree that threatened the house and blocked a window is nearly out. They chopped off all the fronds, dug around it, and will pull out the stump tomorrow morning.


You can see here how close the trunk has come to the house. Just a few more years and it would shift it off its foundations.


Without the palm fronds, the window is fully visible. I need to think about what I plant in its place. Part of me wished I could plant a pomegranate there, but in the long run it will cut off too much light to that window.


The contractor also replaced the missing sprinkler head. When I finally managed to turn on the water the other day, all that happened was all the water pressure when to missing head and the water flowed into the gutter.



Yesterday evening, I finished removing the sod from the area that will be my vegetable garden. I want to compost the sod, but I'm still trying to figure how (and where) to put up a compost pile. I also got the second row of bricks in place. Now, all I need is the top soil.


It turns out that there is one sprinkler head in the area I set aside for the garden, right by the steps leading to the porch. I'll talk to the contractor about either sealing it off or closing it somehow.

I have a verbal estimate for refinishing the floors and we're going to meet in the morning to talk about it. I'm also working on getting the interiors painted (I'll worry about the exteriors later).

Baseboards

I'm still waiting on a final bid from contractor on refinishing the floors. We met yesterday morning and went over the baseboard options.

The original baseboard was 2", which was too small. Replacement options include

3.5"


4.4"


4.5"


Here's a side by side comparison of all three:


I went with the tallest. While part of me preferred the simplicity of the slightly shorter version, I think the added baroqueness (what I called ungepatchke) matches better the door frame and the crown moulding.