Building a Little House in the Big Woods: July 2010

When we purchased our maple flooring in February, the miller (Kings Mountain Hardwood) did not have enough maple available at the time to supply our entire house. Nino was able to mill the remainder of the wood to order, knowing that we wanted different widths, as wide as he could make them. Noah went to pick up the flooring on Monday and we were thrilled with the results. The boards vary in widths from 2" all the way up to 8" and lengths up to 12 feet! Linna has been in town for a week to vacation and help us out, which worked out perfectly since she was able to help Noah carry the wood upstairs from the U-haul. With the two of them unloading, and Mindy stacking, it took the three of us over 3 hours to take care of the last 1000 sq. ft. The side benefit to having the door left open for over three hours at night is that we had a collection of moths in the house at the end. There were some really gorgeous ones that we had no idea existed! Check out our family blog to read about the creatures of the night!

stacks of flooring

8-inch wide boards!

While Linna has been here to help us out, we worked on flooring the library and sewing rooms. We were still working with the first installment of wood that we purchased. The most recent wood has to acclimate to our humidity levels and environment before installing. We hope to be able to use it in a few weeks.

starting flooring in library

Linna stapling down rosin paper

half-way through library floor

finished library floor installation

prepping sewing room for flooring

Linna and Mindy worked on painting the master bathroom while Noah was picking up the flooring. One more coat to completion. The colors are Sherwin Williams, Hinting Blue and Denim Blue. Now that the seaming and paint is complete, we will soon be ready for tile. First we have to build a shower bed and install a waterproof membrane (Schluter brand Kerdi product) before we can tile. But we are on our way!

seaming the cement board was a multi-step process. Fiber tape, thinset over cement board seems, mud over drywall side of seams

mudding complete in master bathroom

primed walls in master bathroom

painted master bath

AND, in ***HEADLINE NEWS***...we now have kitchen and dining room floors ready for use! We moved the stove back into the kitchen today. HOORAY! It has been 4 months. **SIGH** A very creative and crazy 4 months without an oven. For more details, well, that would take a novel. We started with outside fires and take-out a few times a week. This was not supposed to take 4 months!! Then we survived the past 2 months with a borrowed a hot plate and crockpot from dear friends. To celebrate the replacement of the oven, we cooked fish sticks and frozen tots in the oven for dinner. And we ate our first meal in the dining room! It felt absolutely wonderful.

cured polyurethane on dining room floor

cured polyurethane on kitchen floor

The kids were so excited to be able to finally walk on those floors. They twirled around and made themselves dizzy until they could hardly stand. They ran around from room to room. Paradise. And since we are now flooring the sewing room which has been their temporary bedroom, they have a new temporary bedroom in the newly floored library. Hooray for summer!!