“Man, that looks serious…”

That’s what Dale, my neighbor that knows tons about home improvement, said about the floor last night:

You can see the rows of 1/2″ stove bolts holding the new joists and old joists together. This thing ain’t goin’ nowhere.

This is a slightly more detailed view:

For the first part of the subfloor I had to cut out notches for the pipes that run up beside the basement steps, and the entryway to the basement:

That was tough, manhandling that into place but it’s done.

Oh, yes, for those that wanted to know what my dead sexy new facial features look like I took a photo. This is about four days afterwards, so they were a LOT worse when they first happened.

So the story goes like this: I was looking for the crown on a 16 foot 2×8. That’s one big piece of lumber. I found the side with the crown, and started to slide it across the floor, and it caught on a staple (A really big staple used to anchor plastic to plywood for shipping). The 2×8 stopped moving suddenly but my face did not and I basically hit myself on it.

All the girls think I’m dead sexy. Or dreadfully scarry, I can’t remember which.

Contest of the day:

Come up with a caption for this photo:

Post your ideas in the comments section.

Back to the Mess…

Here you can see some of the sister joists installed. All are leveled and secured:

This is a poorly lit shot that will tell you just how out of level the subfloor was…

And this is the money shot… The sister joists are all in. If you look carefully to your left, near the two hand clamps and the broom (which fell in the middle of the night and scared the crap out of me) you can see that the old joists were actually bowed upwards, and we had to plain them down with a hand plainer to get them level. This does not weaken the structure because I am nailing the shit out of the sister joists, which now bear the load. The only place the original joists will bear load without the new joists is at the ends.

Tonight I get the rest of the nailing done, and then put down as much of the subfloor as I can…

This is my truck, FOO…

So as much as I have always really kinda dissliked this truck, and dissrespected it, it has always done what I wanted it to do. Now a new transmission, transfer case, and a bunch of other stuff later it’s nearly at 95k and still kicking. The one thing I will say in it’s favor (despite someone recently getting into it and saying “oooo, leather…”) is that it has always dutifully done anything that I have asked it to do. Even though I don’t like this vehicle, it still gets about $2-3k of maintenance a year. I tend to over do it because I need it to last till next summer.

Yes, you are seeing correctly, that is 10, count ‘em, 10 2×8 16 foot joists sticking out the back. They are all 16ft long, with about 8ft sticking out the ass end of my truck. I drove home from Home Depot very slowly, hoping that none of Denver’s finest came across this horror show.

Anyone who wants to buy a 2003 Eurovan MV Weekender, with less than 15k miles, please let me know.

Dude! Forget the kitchen, WERE THE &*(! IS MY FLOOR?!?!

Again, it is very late, I am very tired, very dirty, and very goofy. Yes, that is the plumbing and the basement you can see beneath me.

Dude! Where’s my kitchen!?!?

Yep, I’ve been busy with the crowbar.

So here are some odd things that various people may be interested in…

This is a sample of the flooring I’m going to have put in

Beware of Nitwits in Hardhats Wielding Nail Guns.

That’s what happens at 2:00am when I’ve been working for 8 hours straight on the subfloor. I get punchy and goofy. Well, I’m goofy a lot of the time I guess…

I tried several techniques last night for leveling the subfloor in the living room, but in the end All I got done last night in 8 hours of solid work was this ledge, bolted to the kitchen subfloor:

You can see where some of the old flooring is missing (not my fault) and I have built a 2×4 ledge upon which to seat the new subfloor. This may have to come up tonight, depending on how aggro I get.

I am taking tomorrow and Monday off to work on this, and since I rarely use the computer at home I likely won’t have an update until Tuesday morning, but check back- Maybe I’ll get frustrated and put something up.

I’m still on call for PayPal though, so here’s hoping it’s a quiet weekend.

Someone send me good mojo.

Oh No They’re Not…

So the flooring crew won’t be early, they’ll be on time. They said OCT 25 yesterday, today they say NOV 1. Oh well. Nov 11 for the tile installation. Here is the timeline currently (I haven’t figured on weekend days):

Oct 20 Rebuild slope in dining room.

Oct 21 Continue on slope in dining room and Jack up floor under living room

Oct 22 Move as much as possible out of upstairs bedrooms into garage

Oct 23 Demo carpets in upstairs bedrooms.

Oct 24 Continue demoing carpets and tackstrip upstairs

Oct 26 finish scraping double face tape off floor in den.

Oct 26 new kitchen cabinets ship from factory

Oct 27 Continue trying to level floor in downstairs guest bedroom

Nov 1 hardwood crew shows up.

Nov 7 Hardwood crew finishes.

Nov 8 Cabinets show up.

Nov 9 New Appliances arrive.

Nov 11 Tile crew shows up.

Nov 14 I finish installing the cabinets.

Nov 14 Get quote for countertops.

Nov 16 Countertops go into production.

Nov 18 Finish “breakfast bar” wall in the kitchen.

Nov 23 Drywall ceiling in kitchen repaired, painting starts on trim.

Dec 5 Countertops installed.

Dec 10 Finished installing 1/4 round.

Dec 13 Parents arrive to see results.

At least that’s what I’m shooting for… Reality may set me on a different course, but I’m on a fairly tight time budget.

The flooring guys are going to be EARLY.

So Ron, from Rempell flooring, came by with a final sample of the wood I’m going to use, and we did a final walkthrough. I berrated him with questions about leveling the subfloor, because I’m worried about them showing up and saying “Oh, we can’t do this. You need to change it this way,then we’ll come back”.

So we look at the final estimate, and the dates he’s put in are 10/25/04 for the hardwood guys and 11/1/04 for the tile crew! I am going to bust ass if I want to be read for them. I’m going to ask my boss for Thursday, Friday, and Monday off in order to get ready.

I also want to be there on the first day that they are there, so I can move some of the furniture on the upper floor around. I don’t want to have to lift the couches into the garage. I may also put them on the balcony for the day. I’m using pre-finished hardwoods. That should be much less dissruptive than having the hardwoods finished by hand.

Fire Fire Burning Bright…

Here I would like to chronicle the reconstruction of the fireplace. Something to keep in mind here is that this is a 108 year old Wash Park victorian.

This is what the fireplace looked like before I started:

The mantle was simply held on by a small chain and a nail into the wall. The mirror was held on by clips, and the tile was screwed-and-glued to the wall.

Once the plaster was torn off, this is what it looked like. The air is incredibly dusty, that’s why the camera was having trouble. I basically tore off all of the plaster around the fireplace, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it.

Here I have removed the tile, the cement board (six of them all screwed into the fireplace) and I have cleaned off all of the “fat”, which is what John calls the plaster that has stuck to the brick.

Here John is starting on the re-do of the mantle. This is the first pass, where he had just prepped things out.

The first pass- John and I had a bit of a misscommunication. He thought the photo below is what I wanted, but I didn’t clearly articulate what I really needed. Also, I failed to measure the gas insert properly, and as a result the opening wasn’t tall enough for the insert to be replaced into the fireplace. John agreed to fix it, and build something great. His rates are very reasonable for someone of his talent and skill. John is brick in a way that I am into endurance athletics. When he starts talking about brick you’d think he was talking about his kid, he is so passionate about masonry. Here is how it looked after he did what he thought I wanted:

The finished product. John of Keystone Masonry Reconstruction produced this incredible mantle:

Keep in mind that the moartar is still wet, but when dry it will match the moartar on the wall perfectly. Also, he raised the height of the opening so the fireplace can be re-inserted.

Tac thinks I’m an idiot. Every single night he looks at me with that “Why are you tearing up your great house, dumbass?” expression, and I keep telling him it will look fantastic when it’s finished. Hopefully.