Progress

Hey so here is the progress report on the house. We are 90% done with the floor. The kitchen is further on than what this picture shows but it’s not done. Thats the important part. But I get ahead of myself. It took some serious time and effort to get the kitchen floor up. We had the classic vinyl and how that stuff is put down is they not only glue the nasty stuff to a piece of particle board but staple this board about every 2 inches to the sub floor. Then just for good measure they throw some glue down under that just in case all the 20000 staples work their way out and the floor can then run away.

So there we were after four hours of ripping and cutting and digging the old floor out we had another 2 hours of digging out all the left behind staples. Lorri turns out is a good staple puller out person. Anyway, the biggest road block we have run into is that we have run out of materials. Either I measured wrong or they didn’t send us enough stuff or maybe they thought I was measuring in centimeters ( I have heard that happens a lot when you purchase for Italians.) Well in my defense we did get quite a few boards that had red markings on them that were not usable so I will see what I can do about getting them replaced for no cost. So this is where we ended right before thanksgiving. But enough of the floor was done to enjoy as we had Lorri’s family over for the 3rd turkey dinner of the week.

We went to the Randles first, then we had our own little turkey so we could eat leftovers, then we finished with a 14 pound bird with Lorri’s mom and sister (with her husband too). That way everybody could have nice turkey sandwiches the rest of the week. The one thing I wish we had but forgot to take pictures of was me carving the turkey at my house. For those of you who know me that could be seen as a great feat of bravery. I am moving up in the world you know, face your fears I say. Ok after stepping on the scale this morning I am now 2 pounds heaver than I have been for a long time so It’s time to say good night so I can get up and play the basket ball tomorrow at the good old 6:00 am. But here are a few pictures to send you on your way. They are not put up in the post because I only had a few min tonight to write a post. But they should be pretty self explanatory. Thanks for reading. Cammon out.

The Grand DIY…

And so we began the great journey that was the installing of a new laminate floor. Lorri and I (Cammon) decided that our old white nasty stained carpet needed to go. The family who had this house before us had a few kids and being kids they must have spilled all kinds of sugary substances all over the living/dining room because there all kinds of black stains that showed up a few months after we moved in. So as I said we deiced it was time for it to go. On Friday afternoon I came home from the office early to get a early start on the project. At about 2 p.m. I started moving the furniture out. That didn’t take too long being that we don’t own that much furniture. After all the things were off the floor we could start getting rid of the carpet. The actual carpet came up in about 30 seconds, what they don’t tell you when you talk about removing carpet is that under the carpet there is a big old carpet pad stapled to the floor about every 2 inches. So before you can do anything to a floor you have to clean up every little staple. Good thing I have a cool shop vac.

Vacuuming all the staples                                Trying to start..

Well to make a long story short we finally got the sub floor prepped for our new cool wood laminate…. The guy at the floor store said that putting laminate down is really easy… It just snaps down one piece after another. Ok I am thinking that I played with Constructs all the time when I was a kid this should be easy… So we began. Well I guess my floor guy when he said easy he was actually comparing installing laminate to say a hard wood floor. I guess if you pit those two processes against each other then yes you could call installing laminate easy… (ok so it wasn’t that hard but it makes for a good story.) Ok so it wasn’t quite snap and go it was more like wiggle, press, wiggle again, push and then tap with a rubber mallet. After the first few hours we had a system figured out. We managed to put down 300 square feet in about 8 hours. I think that it’s looking rather nice and it’s very gratifying to know that we made this happen.. To finish the second wave of this project is to figure out how to do the kitchen.. We have to some how cut the kitchen vinyl around the cabinets and then pull it up. The vinyl is glued to a piece of nasty particle board which is in turn glued and stapled to the sub floor. So it’s going to be quite an adventure ripping it all up…. Oh and before it’s all said and done we have to re-finish (and replace, I didn’t break too many of them) the baseboards. We will have to post some of the video we shoot during the last few days….

What are we going to do in this corner?

I think we messed up this board….  Now what?

Last board in the living room.

Now look at the nice clean wall with no cables going to the T.V.

New Floor in progress, stay tuned

We don’t have pics yet because it is right at this moment in progress, but there is a lot of banging going on at the Randle’s house today as Cammon and John take hammer to crowbar to take the baseboards off the wall.

I hope this is worth the headache, literally…

Give Life to Old Cabinets…

Our uncle Quint ended up ripping out the old cabinets in their kitchen to be replaced by new fancy ones so I got a few of the old ones to deck out my garage. The Garage has been a slow project of mine. Finally got the shelves I have been meaning to build up a few months ago. The shelves are made from the same materials I used to build out trade show booth back in March.

After the show I took apart the booth and the the metal sat in the parking spot for the Subaru for a few months. (What good is having a garage if you are scraping ice off your car in the morning anyway.) And finally we had had it so I got to putting up the shelves. It was much easier making shelves than it was designing a trade show booth but in the end both of them I though turned out rather nice. After the shelves went up it was time for the 2nd addition to the Garage. The work bench. Any respectable do it your self home owner needs a work bench. (especially if your wife is tired of you using the kitchen table to drill, solder, carve, build, glue, hammer, etc… on.) As luck would have it my father was adding onto their studio and so there was plenty of scraps, 2x4s and plywood. So we got to building. The only measuring I did was to see how deep I wanted the bench to be. Too deep and we couldn’t park the car in the garage. Too shallow and it would be useless as a workbench. So I got it just right. The cars have just enough room so you can barely squeeze through. The actual construction of the bench was rather a improvisation. With all the different scraps of 2×4 we would grab what looked like worked and then just threw a few extra nails or screws in it to compensate for the lack of Measuring or structural planning. As we were building I could just see in my mind my Grand dad shaking his head and saying “Brother have I not taught you better?” But at the end of the day it is a sturdy bench and it looks like there was some serious thought put into it. This brings us to the cabinets. Yesterday I took 20 min and put up the two big units I had. They are going to work out great. I maybe mounted them a little high but thats ok I like having plenty of room to work on the bench. I will just have to get a little step stool for the high selves. Right now there is about every tool and light I have apart all over my bench so it’s a mess but now that I have my shelves I can put things away…. I just have to wait for another 3 months to do that. Up and coming projects of the house will be a new laminate wood floor in the Kitchen/dinning/living rooms. The have the wood ordered and I should start pulling up old nasty carpet sometime next week. So we will see what adventures await us there.