This past Thursday night I pulled up the carpet and removed the tiles in the guest room. Because that room is only about half the size of the dining room, it only took me about 2 hours to do (that's not including a break at 6:30 to watch Friends). Then on Friday morning I chiseled out all the termite holes (21 I think) and filled them with cement putty. I wanted to make sure they'd be dry by Saturday morning so we could start laying laminate right away. I also removed all the baseboard and the door casing. Because our dining room trim wasn't yet painted (and so the furniture wasn't positioned) I couldn't remove the tiles from the guest room closet since it was still full of all my china and other dining room paraphernalia.
Ugly tile:
You know how nothing ever goes as planned? For instance, I prepared the guest room so that we could start laying laminate FIRST THING on Saturday. Well, first we decided to sleep in (or rather it just happened that way) and then we decided to visit the brand new Costco that just opened in Woodland. We are deliriously happy about this because it is SO close to our house. We could practically (er, impractically since we couldn't carry anything) ride our bikes there! It turns out that grand openings of stores that give out free food samples on rainy days are PACKED. I swear, all of Woodland and Davis where crammed into that store. I even saw my Biogeochemistry professor and his kids.We went as quickly as possible through the store, making sure to sample as many of the treats as we could. The only thing I really wanted to buy was a 50 pound sack of flour and a huge jar of kalmata olives. They didn't have that latter so I made up for it by buying about $100 worth of other things. Strange how that can so easily happen at a place like Costco. I think the real reason we went to Costco was to have a Polish dog and soda (for only $1.50!). We love those things.
So on Saturday afternoon I started painting the dining room trim while Dave continued to prep the guest room. We realized AFTER the fact that I should have painted the base board BEFORE installing it since it is very difficult (for me, at least) to avoid painting the floor and the wall. Dave helped me slide/jam paper under the baseboard and behind it so I could paint freely. That worked well until I had to remove it. Even with a razor blade to score the paint line it was hard to remove. We'll have to come up with a better plan for the other rooms.
Just to ensure that we actually get rid of our icky garage-to-dining room door I decorated it as I painted the door casing. Isn't it gorgeous? I'm quite the ar-teest.
Before Dave starting laying the laminate, we re-read the Ikea directions (and by read I mean "interpret their non-lingual drawings"). Surprise, surprise, we weren't doing it the way they recommended when we did the dining room. It turns out laying the laminate IS a one person job! Haha! So Dave got busy with the laminate and I got busy putting away all my china and crystal.The third thing that kept us off-track was that our table saw blade suddenly went very dull. Dave was in the garage and I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I started to smell something smoky, which isn't too uncommon when you're ripping lengths of wood on the saw. Just like on the magic shows Dave suddenly appeared in the kitchen in a cloud of smoke. He said he'd have to go buy a new blade because the old one wasn't working well. He had me look in the garage and there was nothing but smoke.
When my parents were here last weekend my dad brought his brad-nailer gun for us to borrow, which uses compressed air to drive in these little nail-like brads. For the trim in the dining room we'd used a hammer and a nail setter to drive the nail heads down below the surface so I could putty over them and paint them. Bye bye hammer. Hello brad-nailer! This tool is wonderful for installing trim; it is fast and easy. The dogs don't like it because of the sound. While Dave was using it I was painting the window sills in the dining room. I had both dogs sitting on my feet, with their heads tucked between my legs. I'm surprised I didn't fall over. To them I'm sure the sound was confusing and scary. To me it sounded like the toaster popping up the bread.
Once he got started the floor-laying went very quickly. He trimmed-out the doors (which I will paint in place) and cut and coped all the baseboard. Hopefully I'll find time to paint the baseboard this week so we can install it this coming weekend. I have a physical chemistry midterm on Friday that I should study for instead...
Here's what the dining room looks like now. I'm still searching Cragislist for an oak buffet or dresser to place opposite the hutch and I have some shelving to paint for the other end of the room. But basically, it's done!
For the last 3 weeks I've made pizza on Sunday evenings. This week's was by far the best yet. To the dough I added black pepper, red pepper flakes, oregano, and thyme. Oh. My. Gosh. It was goooood.
The dough:
The pizza...perfect with a glass of Pinot Noir and a salad:
I added a few more pictures of the dogs to their slide show at the bottom of the blog. Make sure to take a look at how CUTE they are!
1 comment:
Your place is looking pretty awesome. I can't wait to see it when we come home again. Every time I read your blog I feel like I'm reading/watching (if you can imagine that) This Old House. Kiss the cousins for me and Emmy!
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