Colors-

We are now in limbo as we wait for cabinets. here is how the colors will all play. white will be subway tile. the black is the shine and color of the appliances. the wood is the cabinets and the big slab is about the color of countertop that we will have.

My blood is slowly turning into concrete

The bug is about to hit again, I can feel it slowly creeping into my system. My polisher and tools have been drying out in the basement for a couple of months. I had replaced them with pry bars and hammers. Demolition tools.

I poured a sample using some PBR brown bottles and a quick, nasty form. I wanted to see what a ton of brown glass would look like in white portland cement with a small handful of blasting sand. Here is the result.

This isn't the final test, but a great way to see what size chunks we want, color, mix, and how much sand to use.

SHINE!

To say we are proud of our hardwork is an understatement.

We are now on our third coat of Poly. I took the palm sander up to 220 and worked it really really really light. It knocked down the small bumps and the floor is looking awesome. It is really awesome to see what we have done with a some hardwork and listening to those who have done floors.

Sanding the floor!

Saturday brought in the big toys. We rented a couple of sanders from the fine folks at United Rentals and away we went. Well we didn't move very fast or aggressive. With a couple of hours into it after the drywall crew left on Friday night, we woke @ 7 am on Saturday morning to try to get the rest of the nasty paper up. Bryan was scheduled to come over around 10, so we really had to get down on our knees and bust it. While our first thought was to only do what would not be under cabinets, we made it all possible by pushing hard through the morning.

Here is a pic of the floor after we moved everything out of the kitchen and cleaned up after the drywall crew.

Bryan is the same guy that helped me with the beam and wall. He has some good experiences under his toolbelt and is willing to share. You can't be people like that! It was was really cool that he showed me how and worked on the sanding of the floor. While a lot of it is nerve-racking, it's really not that big of a deal if you take your time and think out what your steps are going to be. I think it also helped that we had a couple of places that we know are going to be under cabinets and we were able to test our stain and sanding on those.

with all the paper and junk up

Nothing but yellow pine

So after many hours of using the drum sander and that crazy edge sander I was down to stain ready pine. Now while we know that southern yellow pine isn't the greatest wood in the world, we are most excited about the fact that we saved the original flooring. With about 75 combined hours of grunt work, we brought the floors back.

Will I remember how to cook?

honestly this kitchen is making me hate eatting out. I think that we have tried everything around us. Thank god for Whole Foods! I must go there 2-3 times a week. We tried grilling out but the major issue is getting past all of the tools to make it to the sink. Right now there is a bucket of tools hanging out in the left tub of the sink. Here is a pic of our stove.

I don't think that sandy or I had any idea how long and drawn out this would be. And I am positive that we didn't even think about eatting out everynight for over a month. It really sucks. while we are working on the most important room of the house, we truely are unable to server ourselves.

But the end is near. The guys are going to be over tomorrow AM to do the final coat of mud on the walls and should return tomorrow night to start sanding. The electrical is all tucked in and the boxes are cut out. Bryan and I are going to tackle the floor this saturday if Sandy and I can get the remainder of the tile floor up. Wish us luck.

The 4th Phase

Tonight the guys came over to start the drywall. I know that we could have done it, but I think that we could let some guys that do it all the time do it right the first time.

Sometimes you have to steal it

Sometimes you have to steal to get the job done. Steal from another part of the house that is. With the drywall guys coming in tomorrow I have to get all of the old trim ready. And with more needing trim than was removed when I took down the wall, I had to go a hunting.

What we need is true 4 inch casing and that stuff just isn't in the big boxes. Since we are taking out a wall upstairs that had some around it, we stole it.

Now all of the pieces are soaking in a 2nd coat of orange paint remover in the backyard with a hope that we will be able to get them to a state that will allow us to paint and assemble them to reflect what is in the rest of the house.

I thought we were just making bar tops....

But we were really making a couple of pieces of furniture.


After a awesome Widespread Panic show on friday night, we loaded up "Deep Cover" ( my new black truck) and headed to Columbia SC!

What started out as a great idea turned quickly into a "ohhh this is going to be tough to pull off" and eventually into "can you believe that this started out looking like that?"

The project was to create two bar tops out of some old wood that I have from the American Tobacco building in Durham NC. HERE is where it came from and what it started out as. Flooring. THIS is another link to what it looked like finished.

Jerry and I worked probably 16-19 hours to get it milled down using the table saw and planner. We thought that we were going to tackle it with the bandsaw but that just wasn't the case. This stuff was so "pitchy" and full of 130 year old sap that we just couldn't get more than 3 boards done before the blade went dull. With a little thinking ( thanks to the tasty snacks from Mamma Stover) we were able to figure out a way to get square cuts on some pretty warped stock.

The grain that we found in this old flooring was just awesome!



What you see is just the natural color and grain of the wood and the bookmatching of the grain of one heavy...heavy piece of wood. I won't get into all of details or go into depth about the great satisfaction that it brought by turning those old pieces of flooring into beautiful shapes. But it was really really cool!

I am sure that Jerry will post it all on his blog www.generalrepairs.com

There are lots of pictures of our work over on Flickr
( I don't like Flickr very much, I much prefer my Webshots over Flickr, but Jerrry posts on that site)

If you wanna kiss the sky better learn how to kneel

On your knees boy......

Well if you ever come to this house.....just don't say that you dislike the kitchen floor!

We are way into saving those old yellow pine floors. It's a lot of work, but we are making some serious progress. It comes off just a little bit at a time..say 1/2 inch strips by 4inches long. I think about 2 more nights, when Adam comes back to do the electric and we will be done with removing the old flooring 100%

The Devil lost the fiddle battle in Georgia and decided to live in our kitchen floor.

Day 2 of the kitchen floor...we are both convinced that the devil that lost to Johnny in the Fiddle Battle decided to life in the adhesive that held the lenoleum tiles in our kitchen to the pine below. Honestly this stuff is a mix of tar, felt, sand, and some evil sin. The key to getting it up to a sandable point is using Krud Kutter ( only found at Depot ) and the pry end of a 15inch pry bar. Combine the two with some elbow grease and lots of time, and it starts to come up.

Other than a couple of days cursing the floor and spending some hours in Depot and Lowe's , it was just another fun fun fun weekend working in the kitchen. We plan on ordering cabinets this week and getting Adam to come do some Electric work and finishing the framing out of the bars and beam.