Sunday: Cat got your tung? (9/25/11)

On Wednesday late afternoon we were told we had to be out early Thursday morning for them to put the first two coats of Tung Oil finish on the floors.  We tried to stop by and do things in the basement occassionally, but the smell was pretty overwhelming.  We returned Sunday morning.  Here's the entry...

...and the living room...

...the dining room...

...the kitchen...

...the old front hallway, looking into the dining room...

...and the new hallway.

The flooring has more small knots in it than I expected and it also has holes - some caused by removed nails and some caused by bullets (!).  We're treading lightly in socks only for the first couple of days, so I'm showing some of the holes and knots here...

...and some nail holes here, as well as some sanding marks, so it seems.

But, as predicted, Reuben's one happy dog.

Tuesday: Closets and siding... (9/20/11)

Today they removed the door frame and shelving from the closet in the new walk-in pantry.  It seems like it will be so much more usable as a recess rather than a closet.

And they finished the siding on the South side of the house.  This from the front corner...

...and this from the back corner.  Hey!  Who tacked that ugly yellow-siding thing onto the back of our house?!  How did that happen?

Monday: Siding! (9/19/11)

Our architect talked about this design as being "intersecting boxes."  It's a lot more obvious visually now that the siding is going up.  Everywhere that was previously the white Tyvek wrap is now being covered with cedar siding.

So here's the outside of the new dining room...

...and here's the inside of the courtyard.

Here's the front corner - the hallway window is now surrounded by the cedar siding. 

Sunday: Flooring! (9/18/11)

As you can see, Reuben and I are still recovering from being essentially trapped in the guest bedroom for most of two days.  They finished the flooring on Friday at about 8:30 pm.  I spent Saturday lying around in a daze, and finally got around to taking pictures on Sunday.

Here's the back side of the living room...

Here's the front entry...

Here's the new hallway looking toward the back door...

Here's the new dining room...

Here's the kitchen...

...and the pantry (full of wayward stuff we couldn't fit in the basement)...

...and the bedroom hallway.  We'll do the floors in the bedrooms at some future date, when we have more flexibility in moving furniture.

Thursday: Flooring (9/15/11)

I got a call yesterday, saying that they would be ready to start flooring the next morning and that we (meaning me - Jack hasn't been here for the week) should completely clear the area.  We had sort of settled back into this space since there wasn't any work going on for quite a while.  This was what was left first thing in the morning, and I cleared everything out but the couch and the fireplace burner, on the left, by the time they came.

This is the rest of the "before" flooring.

They had also wire-brushed all the grout to prepare it for sealing with a commercial sealant, and came back the next day and sealed all the stone/grout surfaces.  We'll see once we get some rain...

After...  This photo is taken from the front corner, near the end of the hearth.  They completed almost all of the large area of the living room.  They left a gap uninstalled near the previously wet corner by the hearth.  It rained a bit today, but unfortunately, not enough to prove out the new grout sealant.

It was a hard day on Reuben.  Very, very loud and very confining, since they're replacing the floor in the bedroom hallway too.  He soothed himself in his usual way, by napping while resting his head on something incredibly uncomfortable - the foot of the ironing board.  I think if we had a bed of nails, he'd be into it.

Thursday: ...Come again another day! (9/8/11)

The height of the water in the BMP was really starting to concern me.  I was picturing the water topping the ridge on the far side and dumping into the neighbors' sun room.  Then I pictured us getting sued.  When it's full, though, it does appear to spill over into the driveway and out to the street.

We also have this apparent spillway on the other side of the front lawn, where the water had broken down the silt fence in the last storm.  We'll have to figure how to channel water here...

The dining room wall was wet at both ends, affecting the subfloor.

This is the subfloor at the front of the house beside the hearth.  The floor guy won't start installing the new floors until it's ensured that we've cleared up this problem.

And the plaster guy won't do the finish coat on the fireplace wall until this is solved.

But we didn't get a drop of water in the basement!!!

Later that day, a brave delivery man delivered our next-to-last light.  This one is to hang in front of the fireplace wall.  Somehow it's not exactly what I expected.  But Jack loves it, which is good.

Wednesday: Rain, rain, go away... (9/7/11)

I don't even remember which hurricane/tropical storm this was - Lee, maybe?  We're obviously still having trouble...

Here's the side of the fireplace wall.  The wet side, that is.

Sunday: Starting to seal (9/4/11)

We didn't really expect that anyone would be working over the holiday weekend, but a couple of guys showed up and started laying the cedar siding out on the front porch and putting the first coat of Sikkens sealant on it.  I'm pretty pleased with the quality of the siding so far...

Another view of the front porch...  It almost looks like a deck, doesn't it?  But our decking will be more narrow and running the other direction.

Wednesday: And then the floodgates opened... (8/31/11)

...(in a good way) and things started to arrive.

The cedar siding was delivered in the morning.  A very nice gentleman made the grave mistake of knocking on the front door and was greeted by a rampaging poodle.  The first words out of his mouth were, "Your dog scared me."  Bad poodle.

A couple of hours later, the flooring truck arrived.

These are our packages.  The ones behind them were some sort of sections of a tower to be delivered to the Saudi Arabian Embassy that's apparently near us in Merrifield, VA.  Who knew?

Here it is loaded into the living room, where it will acclimate for a week before being installed.  I was concerned about seeing more knots and dark spots than I would have expected, but realized I was looking at the backs of the boards.

I was tremendously relieved once I got the chance to break open two of the bundles.  Beautiful!  I can't wait!

Monday: Waiting makes me crazy (8/29/11)

This is me, waiting on flooring that's sitting in a warehouse in Manassas, waiting on not-returned phone calls, and waiting for my child to go back to school so I can use my computer again.

Sunday: No tomatoes were bruised by Hurricane Irene... (8/28/11)

...at our house!  Early Sunday moring, Hurricane Irene lazily dragged her tired self up the coast.  We saw some trees down and lost power for half a day, but otherwise were fortunate to have no damage at all.

Although it's clear that the sealant used on the chimney isn't working.