Floors

Yesterday we put the second coat of poly-urathane on the hardwood. The first went on pretty well, but took much longer to dry than it said on the can, and further, had drips and thick spots which did not cure at all. Mrs. House and her father sanded and cleaned the floors, and then after the mineral spirts had dried, her dad swabbed another layer on top of that. I think there will be a picture set showing the exciting steps of this process soon.

My dad and Mrs. House's dad also installed our new entry area light. They had fun figuring out the status of all the wires crammed into the box, and also when the mounting screw went into the pigtail cover and touched the hot wire. Pictures of the light to come as well. Basicaly I am a big tease.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we are hoping to move in... we will see how that goes. Hopefully it will not be too bad, since most of our stuff has proceeded us. Today I am working late, so Mrs. House will be doing even more of the work than usual.

Fireplace ideas

So I do really love our brick fireplace wall that separates the living room from the dining area. The only trouble is, I really have no idea what to do with it. It puzzles me. I know a few things are wrong. For example, the mantel is too high on the wall. It looks very awkward way up there all alone. Also, the color of the wood is all wrong because it has no contrast with the brick.

Secondly, we have the insert. At first I wasn't sold on the idea of having an insert because it takes away from the whole romantic notion of having open flame in the middle of your home. Also, lets face it, they are not very attractive. But when the home inspector did the inspection that insert was the one and only thing that he said was done perfectly and had no problems. There was no way I was going to go to all that effort to fix something that wasn't broken when we have a list a mile long of things that ARE broken. So the insert stays. Plus they are energy efficient and all that jazz.

Also, there is just so much brick! So much RED brick. Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But it presents another design problem of what to put on it and where.

I was browsing one of my favorite places to get home design inspiration - saucy dwellings - I saw this photo and fell in love.

So that started me on a mission to find an antique or faux-antique fireplace mantel. Which I have already found some leads on craigslist! I just have to determine the budget, measure the fireplace to get the size and figure out how to move and install what could basically be a huge block of cement.

I also am getting some ideas as to what I want to go above the fireplace, but I am keeping that under wraps for now.

Solar Water heater

With a southern exposure, and an electric hot water heater, the mind naturally turns to installing a solar water heater as a way to save energy, and ultimately money. A quick poke around this site indicates that we may be able to get rebates for around $3000 from the State and SMUD, as well as a 30% tax credit on our 2010 Federal taxes. With an average install cost of something around $8000, this would bring the long term effective cost of a solar hotwater heater to something like $2600, and therefore makes the eventual repayment of the installation costs.

On the further bonus side, that would also free up the hot water closet for the server and switches, and move a source of potential water leakage away from our new tile/hardwood.

Maybe this is something to spend our federal stimulus money on. (along with new energy efficient windows?)

tile, tile everwhere!

We finally have the tile nearly finished (it just needs to be sealed)! This was one of our biggest, and surely our most expensive projects.

Here is what it looked like before. Please note the ugly brown carpet (I first typed that as 'crapet' - which I think is a better descriptive word, I will have to remember to use that one). Also note the linoleum in a lovely half moon shape. The linoleum actually wasn't that bad but there were no hardwoods in the dining area so for continuity we figured we might as well do the whole thing at one time.

Here is what it looked like after we took the crapet off, with the pad stuff down.

Here is a very messy shot during painting week. Its true what they say, the kitchen is the heart of any home,  especially during a painting party. Also note the GREEN walls and the orange pads are gone!

Ok now are about to get down to work. Here come the dads to take out all of the underlayment. Thanks dads! That was some hard work!

One of three layers of linoleum that we had to dig up

Also please note the huge scorched part of the floor that we found! Yay fire damage!

And now for the finished tile!

Getting so close to living in our first home now!

Tune in next time for "Wood Floors: A Facelift"

Quick update

We have floors!

Thanks to the superlative efforts of the fathers (and some much needed last minute help from the brother/cousin brigade), we rid our house of underlayment (33 man hours of work), fixed up the hard wood floors, installed carpet ($), and are currently having tile installed($$$), which looks great so far.

Still to come, linoleum for the master bathroom, and some sort of leveler for the rumpas room, followed by carpet in there. Slightly further down the line is patching the sunroom's concrete floor, and then cleaning and repainting it with floor epoxy.

This weekend we are moving furniture, after which we need to clean the old house, finish the wood floors at the new house, and then move in for good. Sort of scary, that...