Floors for days

When we took on this blogging endeavor I thought for sure I'd be able to keep up with it on a regular basis. Who am I kidding. Alas...another delayed post...

So. It's been six months since we put in an offer on the house. Things have progressed differently than we thought. We're handling the stress differently than we thought, at times. It's hard. Ben spends most of his free time at the house trying to get it ready for us to move in as soon as possible. I get that and while I appreciate it, I miss my best friend. BUT...the house is turning out better than I originally imagined, so it's getting even more exciting to dream about the future we'll have there. I found an image online one day in August when we were in the early planning stages. It stopped me in my tracks. Imagine if we could take this:

To this:

While there are vast differences in lines and architecture, the basic concept is the same. Use your imaginations. I knew we weren't going to end up with something exactly like this, but it helped me visualize a little. I sent it to Ben and he loved it but immediately pointed out the reasons why our house would be different (peak dormers vs. shed, double garage door vs. two separate, "I thought we wanted white siding", etc.) and I was all like, bro, I get it, it's not an exact science here. All I was looking for was a general idea of what we were dealing with. He takes things very literally. I sent the picture to Greg too, and the next time we met with him he pointed out the same differences and I was like okay...maybe this is a guy thing? I don't know. But either way...our house will look kind of like this but also really not. Kapish?

At this moment, our house looks like this:

Since the last post all of the electrical is in and most of the windows on the original house have been replaced. HVAC is mostly set, with the addition of two new furnaces and the removal of radiators. We decided to move forward with replacing the boiler system and feel completely at peace about this. Ben has made several trips to Padnos to recycle the copper and other metals we've pulled out of the house, and so far we've made about $200 in scrap. If that's not a great reason to update the heat source in the house I'm not sure what is. Ben's dad also took some copper wire back for us as well, but not before burning off all of the remaining insulation to get us top dollar. He's in the know in the recycling circles.

Tearing off siding and replacing windows

Isn't he handsome? 

Drywall started going in this week so that's really exciting! And now that there are functioning furnaces it's no longer an ice box in there. It's starting to feel like somewhere we could spend the rest of our lives, which is pretty much what you'd want to feel with such a large undertaking.

Ben and I spent the better part of three days (including New Year's Eve until 11:30 pm and New Year's Day) sanding the maple floors in the kitchen. We took off layers of paint, grime, glue, you name it. There was even a patch of tar which was kind of baffling until Ben decided it must have been the location of the sink at some point in the 130 year history. The whole sanding process was a learning experience for sure. There were several moments (hours) of doubt when we didn't think the drum sander was enough to get through to the maple. We spent a lot of time on our hands and knees scraping glue off with chisels. Later we realized that if we had just trusted the process and the 36 grit drums, we would have been fine. Live and learn...but also...never again. Anyways, we're happy with the flooring we uncovered and Greg found a place in Kalamazoo with the same stuff and ordered enough to patch in where we need and to cover the new space where the original stairs to the basement had been. Once we get that patched in we'll have to visit Ben's friends at Taylor Rental again to get an orbital sander then poly up that floor. After reading up on how tricky maple can be to work with, we decided to forego staining it and just seal the original wood. This plan could change again...we tend to do that...work in progress as they say.

Day Three

We can live with that

Ben's proudest moment...a dumpster diving wife. I think he actually shed a tear.

We couldn't have made it through those days without our families. Ben's parents, my parents and Tim & Tiff all took turns with the boys. It's a season of life where we need some extra help and we are so thankful for lots of family nearby.

We also discovered yellow pine flooring in the entire upstairs. We knew it was there in some places, but didn't know it ran throughout. We got the hallway and landing area sanded down enough to put a fresh coat of heavy duty paint on it. The plan was to keep this flooring exposed and patch in where needed, then put carpet in the upstairs addition. The original floor had already been painted, so it seemed like the easiest solution for now. And yellow pine isn't my favorite because it's just a little, well, yellow for my liking. But then we had this discussion the other day:

Ben: Would you consider putting pine flooring in the addition too, to tie in to the original floors?

Me: NO.

Awkward two minute silence.

Me: Well, could we stain it a darker color?

Ben: Absolutely! Whatever you want.

Me: Well...let me look online a little...

Two minutes of Google. 

Me: It would be a lot of work. We'd have to re-sand the floors to get them stain-able, lay all new flooring in the addition, stain and finish everything...but I always said I didn't want to pay for carpet ever again because it gets kind of gross with the pets and you and the boys spill so much...if we could make it darker I think I could be on board...okay why don't you see if we can even get the same stuff and find out how much it is. 

Ben: You realize you just had an entire argument with yourself and I never said a word, right?

Me: Yes, but you chose to marry me, so this is not my fault.

This used to be a chimney. It did not survive Ben.

Whenever people find hard woods (or in our case soft woods) under carpet on HGTV it's like winning the lottery. I don't disagree...it's pretty exciting. But I'd like to know how they sand, stain and finish it all in 45 minutes because I'd really like to implement that technique here. At any rate, the upstairs flooring remains undecided for now. This also changes the discussion about the new staircase as we had planned to carpet this as well. It also changes my shopping needs because I'll be in the market for area rugs and stair runners if we go this route. As my mom says (or quotes), "blessed are the flexible, because they will not be bent out of shape."