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.

We kept the receipt!

The church of Lowe's!


Of course we started the weekend off with a trip to church. The church of Lowe's. I don't think there has been a week since we moved here that we have not gone. To the left is our purchase Friday Night.
Out of Lowe's by 10:30 and sending it all back by Saturday Morning.

We thought we would tile the kitchen, linoleum over yellow pine, we just were not feeling the love. So we spent some coin! The thing is, we just didn't like it enough to keep it. It was nice, but nothing that we wanted to keep. Instead we consulted with some neighbors, some cans of stain,and decided to move forward with removing the ancient linoleum. OH FUN!

We will be hard at it again tomorrow. We are going to get a good meal and relax....then try to figure out how to get that black goo crap off the wood.

The sink hangs from a couple of chains!

Somewhere in one of the fancy home improvement magazines....I am willing to bet it was that family handyman mag that shane and shayla over in charlotte LOVE....my wife found the idea to hang the kitchen sink from the ceiling with chains so that you can continue to work and clean up. So Far so good. The cabinets cam out pretty easy. We are down to the floor and to the drywall . It doesn't look to be anything too hard down there.

Saturday- Sandy and I tried our hand in basic framing. I think we did a pretty awesome job. It's square, plumb, and sturdy! The bars are frammed and now we need to frame the beam out to take drywayll. I will get pics up this weekend!

Next step? Tile the kitchen floors this weekend I do believe. It has been left to me to choose the tile, sat and sunday we start to lay them!

Carrington Electric and Spiders

So progress here at the ranch, cave, rock....whatever you wanna call it....has slowed down a bit. Jon (hvac) is really busy with his full-time day job and I got bit by a spider on my ankle. I am on a couple of different antibiotics and the swelling is starting to go down, but I still look like I have fat mans foot.

Adam just left @ 10:35 on Wed. night! I just can't believe how flexible and willing that guy is to work with us on the electric for the house. The guy works a full day doing commercial work and then makes it over to our house for 3 hours more! He is awesome! The best part is the fact that he cares about our house and doing the best job that he can possibly do. The details that this guy does just to insure that everything is perfect is simply amazing! If anyone gets down to the basement, be sure to ask to see the electric system!

We are going to be busy this weekend with at least one day dedicated to building the bars between the kitchen and dining room. I will post up on here.


Oh yeah if you are digging on my posts about renovation you might like Nick's blog over @http://wsbungalow.blogspot.com/ He was the guy that always helped me and I always helped when we lived out on the Left Coast.

Almost there-

Javier said 7am....and he meant it.

He shows up with 2 guys and just gets after it! One guy wrapping pipe, one running duct, himself measuring the vents out...leaving me to cut the out of these floors.




One nice thing about cutting out parts of the floor is the scrap blocks that are created. I sanded them down and Sandy tried a couple of different Poly's on them. We want to re-do the finish on them and get them back to natural. Here are the tests that she did.

The original is on the far right.

The far left is some ebony stain I tried.

All and all it was a great day. The system held 300lbs and Jon will be able to run it as soon as our electrician gets to hooking up some volts! All of the vents are in, the ducts wrapped, and the machines in place. The summer will be somewhat pleasant within these stone walls.

Oh yeah. Sandy started another project while she was waiting for the rain to stop and for me or Javier to give her a project. She took down all of the ceiling tiles upstairs.....and started to pull wall paper. Oh Boy...Wall Paper!

Go Home! It's 10:45!!!!

These guys are just animals!
It's 10:45 and you can still hear the banging, drilling, cutting in the basement here at 2505. Javier and his 4 guys are pounding it out down below grade. The airhandler is up, the soft duct is run to the 1st floor vent locations, the air return is cut and placed, and the holes for the second floor runs are in. The second floor run holes look like we are installing an old fashioned 2 seater at the moment, but I have been told that they will be filled in with nice hard duct.

Javier and the guys just left to go home for the night. 7am and they will be back. Man ol Man how hard they work

Beer Break

Big plans for the house this weekend. Air Condition! That's right we bought a house in NC that didn't have central AC. We did have some window units, but those were energy hungry, and only worked to keep cool a couple of rooms. We are moving right on into the modern day with this house. First was new plumbing, second was electric, now AC.

So the beer break goes on until tomorrow. Jon and Javier will arrive and start placing equipment to get it all ready for install on Sat and Sun. Adam will be over sometime during the week to hook it up with the electric supply. Then after we pass inspection we'll have a nice little cool place to escape to during the brutal, humid NC summers.