TRIMWORK

Friday after work we got to the house and found out that Mark and Wojcio were going to be coming over on Saturday to help out... so Tommy started working on the window stools for the first floor and I started painting crown molding for Mark to install and his dad worked on extention jambs for the first floor.... We then decided to go to Applebees for half price with his dad and we got a lot of food for cheap... we all went to sleep... Saturday morning I tried to get up earlier than Tom and his Dad and put another coat on the crown molding, but I only got 1 painted before they woke up... We needed some more material for the window stools so we had Wojcio pick it up on the way to the house... When Mark got there shortly after we gave him his job... put up the coiffered ceiling in the office... haha but that was not the original plan... I thought he was going to put up the crown in the master bedroom... guess not... anyway we discussed what we wanted and him and Wojcio went to work on it... Andre also came over... he helped tommy with the window stools... Tom's dad worked on some tightening up in the basement (secured the well pipes and the furnace flew better than they were)... and I painted all day... First I finished the crown, then did the extension jambs for the 1st floor, and then painted the "smaller" crown that we decided to use on the ceiling in the office.  tommy and andre got almost all the stools done and tom's dad started to install the extention jambs... Mark and Wojcio worked all day on the coiffered ceiling and it got finished by the end of the day... it looks really awesome!  There is a lot of caulking and puttying that I will need to do, but the look is soooo worth it... I love it!

 

Sunday Tom started to work on the TOP portion of the window moldings... he set up the planer and the table saw and started to rip, plane, and route the rest of the pieces... While he did that i put the extension jambs in the office... Then we started to build the tops... we decided to do them all on the bench instead of trying to piece them together above the window... We got one completely put together and one coat of paint on it... It looks great!  Then in the afternoon we went out to dinner with his family for Tom's birthday... tried two different red lobsters and both were 1.5-2 hour wait so we went to Longhorns which was pretty good.

ELECTRICAL MISHAPS

Tom's parents were at the house a few days this week during the day. His dad wired up the outlets in the basement and had some issues... We poked some holes in the sheetrock because we thought an outlet might be hidden, but after looking at pictures we decided there was no outlet there and the issue must be somewhere else... The breaker kept popping and I guess a black and ground were touching somewhere... All fixed...

Also found another electrical issue... There was no power in the outlets over the bar counter or the nook in the dining room... these are fed from the GFI in the powder room... apparently there is no link between the GFI in the powder room and the first outlet over the bar counter... OOOPS! my fault... so his dad figured out a way to drill holes from the basement withouth hitting any other pipes or wires to run the jumper between the outlets... NOW they work!

After work we finished up the stools and put in the extension jambs on the second floor... and yesterday we started to install the casing. LOOKS GOOD! Tommy also started to finish up the rest of the door installation yesterday, but there are still a few more to finish.

Our groundhog came out of hibernation... There is a big mudhole in the snow outside the sliding glass door and muddy footprints in the snow... He has decided he is done with winter and although I like the SNOW days, I am ready for some springtime weather.

PRESIDENTS DAY WEEKEND

tAfter the two days we had off last week we also have a LONG weekend... wow.. Friday night we worked late and grouted the kitchen floor.... Tommy did the grouting and I cleaned it up with the sponge. We used unsanded grout because the sanded would scratch the surface of the travertine tiles (we did that without knowing on the powder room floor)... Mistake we made was not picking up some rubber gloves and the grout does a number on your hands... it eats my hands alive, but it was worth it because it looks good...

Since we had the long weekend we decided it was time to start the trimwork. We went to the lumberyard on Saturday morning and purchased a majority of the trim we needed. We are going to do a craftsman inspired trimwork, not the colonial style. It is a bit more work but we like it better and it will make all the arched doorways and windows easier to trim. On top of the craftsman style trim we are doing a window stool on all the windows out of pine... we are going to stain the window stool to match the brazillian cherry hardwood floor we are going to put in and the trim will all be white. I hope it looks sharp. Anyway once we got the molding I painted the casing and Tommy set up all the tools in the garage. Then Tom's dad made the extension jambs for the 2nd floor with the shaper table (used to put the tongue on it) and his mom painted them. We cut the pine for the stools... but we aren't doing straight stools, they are going to be arched on the front lip... so we figured out how to make the curve since the radius is HUGE, like 60 feet for some windows... and got the router table set up and decided what bits we wanted to use for the stools... Tommy routed them out and I put the pocket holes and sanded them. We didn't finish them by the end of the day Monday but we had everything figured out and we now know what we want and how to do it.

SNOW DAYS

We had a blizzard on Wednesday... so work was cancelled! and we were still digging out on Thursday so we took the day off of work. The snow looks beautiful and we were able to get a lot of work done. We finished the kitchen floor tile... We cut up almost 600 sq ft of 18x18 tile to the sizes we wanted by the time this floor was finished... It looks pretty good though.

We pushed ourselves and got the grouting and cleanup done in one friday night after work. We stupidly forgot to buy rubber gloves and our hands were burning and eaten from the "concreteness" of the grout. Tommy did the grouting and I did the cleanup with a sponge. It was not easy but we got it done and it looks great.

BUSY

Sorry I can't keep up with the blog!

Since the last time I updated we started the kitchen floor tile. We laid down the plywood in a day using the superdrive screw gun... it is typically used for installing ceiling sheetrock because it is long and is self feeding... that is why we bought it but we didn't do the sheetrock ourselves so we still had screws leftover on the strips and it was great to use for the plywood on the floor so you could stand up and drive the gazillion screws in.

We decided to buy Travertine tile for the floor. We thought we wanted travertine and had been looking around for good deals and everywhere we went it was somewhere between 6 and 9 dollars a square foot and there was a lot of fill in it. BUT we stumbled upon it at Home Depot for less than 3 dollars a square foot. The only issue is that the tile is 18" x 18" and that is not what we wanted on the kitchen floor... soooooo we break out the tile saw and start cutting it up!!! We decided to do a Versailles style pattern. There are 4 tile sizes, 12x18, 12x12, 6x12 and 6x6. We have to cut each one out of the 18x18 tiles. It is a lot of work and the reason we are still working on the kitchen floor. We have about two thirds finished so far and it looks great. We ran out of tile on Saturday of this past weekend and spend Sunday looking for more. We went to Flemington Home Depot and they had a few boxes but they were from an older lot and looked TOTALLY different, went to Bridgewater...same deal... went to the other Bridgewater... same deal... then we drove to Phillipsburg and they had a whole pallet of the stuff we needed so we took a little more than we think we need just in case...

Meanwhile Tom's parents have come over a few days... His mom brought all the rest of the 2x4 firewood inside so we can burn it... His dad hung the flood lights outside, checked and fixed all the switches and finished everything I had not started... and he wired up all the outlets... then he put in all the breakers in both the upstairs and basement panels.

Also painted the dining room a darker color recently... It was very light and the curved ceiling was disappearing so I painted it darker and it looks better.

We had one 'small' fiasco... We were laying tile one night and Tommy went into the foyer to cut a tile... but all of a sudden he ran upstairs... a few seconds later he yelled "shut the water off"... I had no idea what he was talking about and ran upstairs... he was in the Princess Bathroom and water was everywhere... I ran back downstairs and flipped whatever water levels there are by the well inlet and hoped for the best because I didn't know which one was the main water... it stopped... turns out one of the compression fittings for the sink hoses was not tightened enough or wasn't slid on all the way so it popped off... oops... we will go around and check all of those now, if not change them to sweat fittings... There was no damage although it doesn't look good in the pictures... Because of the curved ceiling of the dining room the water rolled down the walls and came out on the floor downstairs... no damage...yay!