I'm Floored

Well, actually, to be honest and correct, I am about 50% floored, but it is progress nonetheless. We have finished the living room and gotten the furniture put back in place. That freed up the kitchen, which is next. We have also completed the hallway and one of the spare bedrooms (the one we use for an office). We still need to paint that room before we can replace the baseboards and put up the quarter round, but the floor is done, which is the big one. Here are some pictures for you.



This is the living room, with all the trim done but no furniture yet. All of these photos were taken with my cell phone, so they may or may not turn out well. Just use your imagination please haha.



Here is our hallway closet, not much to see here, just a shot of the flooring.



The office and its closet.



From the office to the hallway, if you'll notice, I was able to make it all one piece with no transition, no threshold, no nothing, just smooth floor.



I was able to accomplish this by using the above piece of wood. It's called a spline, and it lets you reverse the direction you are laying your tongue and groove. Basically, you have to nail the tongue side of the board, and you can't put groove to groove without the spline. That little piece lets you reverse direction, meaning I could lay the hallway in one direction, then come back later and add in the bedroom, reversing direction of the lay. Confused? It was easy to do, but maybe hard to explain. I have since found out that professional installers now start in the middle of the longest room in the house and use the spline to allow them to lay out equally in both directions, so that they have an even sized piece at the edge of room on both sides. I'm no pro, so I didn't do that in my living room, but if I ever did it again, I would probably go that route. It was that easy.



Here's a closer up view of the transition. Nice and smooth!

The project wasn't without it's hiccups though. It is definitely much slower doing it without help. I have had April a few days, and I had a buddy from work one day. I was about three times more productive those days than when I'm alone. Just the amount of cumulative effort of getting up and down, swapping out tools, etc. makes a huge difference.

The first 'oops' I had was before I laid the first board. I wasn't sure if the nailer I had borrowed would work for my floors, so I decided I would remove all the nails from the gun and give a board a test hit, then judge from the impact the tool left if it was hitting in the right spot. The nailer is actually a stapler, and the staples come in long rows like you would get for your desk stapler. I pulled out all the attached staples, took a look down inside, and decided that I had gotten them all. I tossed a board in the middle of the room and gave it a whack. The good news was that the nailer would work just fine. The bad news was that I had just stapled a board to a random spot at a random angle smack in the middle of my living room! Apparently it grabs the next staple and stores it in a 'chamber'. Oh well! I got the board up with a little effort.

Anyhow, we are rolling right along. If I didn't have to dodge all the stuff in my house (i.e. if the house was empty) we'd be alot further along, but hey, I'm still having fun. Let me know what you think.

Here comes the story of the hurricane...

The man the authorities came to blame...

Ok, well, maybe not a hurricane but a minor flood and a whirlwind of traveling. Grab some leftover eggnog if you've got any, this one got away from me too...

We traveled all over the place at the end of 2009. It started with a short but fun trip down to ATL for the big 'Towhey Christmas Extravaganza'. A great time was had as always. From there we came back home, I worked a shift or two, then we headed out to see April's family for Christmas. We were there the 25th and 26th, then I was back at work on the 27th. I was scheduled to leave on the 28th to go duck hunting with Dad and Bill, but April got sick and I had to go home early from work to help her out. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make it to the lake, but she rallied and got well enough to take care of herself and was nice enough to let me go. I had a really great time, managed to stay warm, and even got a duck, but there weren't many flying, so we didn't get to do much hunting, just a bunch of waiting. I still really had a great time, I kept telling everyone it was better than sitting at work thinking about it! I stayed the 28th - 30th, then drove home after a morning of hunting on the 30th. I took a quick shower then we hopped back in the car to go visit some friends in their new house. (At this point I would like to note that I nearly touched every part of the state... I went all the way east to see the in-laws, all the way west and north to duck hunt, then all the way south to visit friends.)

The couple we went to visit were at the reunion in Gatlinburg, Jason and his wife Brandi. Jason was my college roommate. They had been living with his parents at their farm about 90 minutes south of us, and had finally bought a house. Let me tell you, they hit a home run on that one! It has a huge great room that is wide open, giant wrap around porches, very rustic looking home. It is really really great and we were quite envious of their find. Add to it that it sits on 60 acres and attaches to the family farm and I'm not sure it could have gotten any better. The main farm is 600 acres (660 now I suppose) and they own about another 400 acres in the area. It is quite a place, and if I had my choice, I'd live down there too!We stayed with Jason and Brandi until the 1st, then came home.

So, there is the whirlwind, but what about the flood, right? Well, that started sometime before our travels. See, a few days before Christmas, April bought one of those steam mops. She used it on the kitchen floor one night while I was at work. I got home the next day and it looked like the mop had steamed our laminate floor right off the ground! The floor was buckled and warped and water was oozing out at the seams. We were furious, to say the least, that this mop had ruined our floor. We had planned to eventually replace the floors in our house, but this close to Christmas it just wasn't budgeted for. This was probably about the 21st of December that she used it.

On the 24th we were talking on the phone before I went to bed. She made a remark about how water was still seeping up through the floorboards. Uh-oh. Ding, the lightbulb just came on. I had her look under the kitchen sink, and sure enough we had a small drip coming from the hot water line. She turned it off and luckily it stopped. I came home from work and checked out the damage. I tightened the nut on the shut off valve and the leak stopped. I was ready to start ripping out the flooring but decided we'd better call the insurance company instead. I'm glad we did. Unfortunately since it was now Christmas eve, no one would be coming out for a few days. With our travel schedule and the holidays I wasn't sure when the insurance adjuster would be able to meet up with us. While I was hunting I got a call from him, and he said that he would be willing to send out a water cleanup company, and take his word on the damages. When it was all said and done, we needed new kitchen flooring and the bottom of a cabinet, but the subfloor was intact and not damaged enough to need replacing. Since I will be doing the work myself, the money the insurance company gave us is enough that we are replacing the rest of the flooring in the house with hardwood (in addition to the kitchen floor), and probably taking up the lineoleum in the bathrooms to put in tile. We'll have to put in a little ourselves to help cover the difference, but chalk up another one for self-sufficiency! We got home from our friend's house to find a check from the insurance company on the front door of the house.

We found a steal on some bamboo flooring ($1.89 per sq/ft, solid wood, 5/8" thick) and also found out that if we ordered online through our credit card company, we would get a 5% rebate, so yay for us. Also, yay for me, I get a few new tools out of the deal. I bought a small pry/wrecking bar that has been indispensable for taking out the old flooring and I'm also getting a miter saw for cutting the flooring down to size.

April has only taken a few pictures, but I'm sure when we're done we'll have plenty to share. I've been busy and I'm not much of a photo guy, and I've been working her too hard to have time to do it either. The demo part of the job is fun, but cleaning up my mess not so much haha.

In a few days we'll be going to visit my parents for about a week. I've been fortunate to have several days off from work this year at the holidays, and we've been trying to take advantage of it and make hay while the sun shines. Unfortunately by the time the flooring is acclimated to our house and ready to lay, we'll be gone to visit my parents. I'll be out of time off when it's time to actually lay it, but I do get 2 out of every 3 days off, so I'm sure in a week or so we'll have our new hardwood laid down. We'll keep you posted.

This will be a bit of a challenge due to the way our house is laid out, but with some planning I think it will work out ok. Because of the hallway off the living room, we'll have to be sure to get the two bedrooms done as well as the living room before we try the hallway. I think that is the best way to make sure it all lines up properly. It is hard to explain but if you've seen my house you'll know what I mean. Also, if you've ever messed with hardwood, you know that the box comes with long, short, and medium pieces. You don't want all your seams lined up, you want it in a random pattern. Well, bamboo comes in all exactly the same length pieces. I'll just have to be careful to lay out a row or two ahead and use the pieces I cut off effectively. I'm also hoping that this will mean much less waste than you get with traditional hardwood flooring. Any tips are appreciated! We will be nailing it down.

Anyhow, this was going to be a quick update, but it rambled on like normal, so sorry for that!

Very Quick One

Check out this link (sorry, still can't get links to work, you'll have to copy/paste):

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091213/WILLIAMSON01/912130326/2033/WILLIAMSON/Friday+blaze+served+as+training+exercise

I wasn't at this, I was working that day but they left me on an engine to run calls since this took place in another district. As far as I know, they are still planning to run it on the 23rd. I'll let you know if that changes.

See ya real soon folks.

Merry Christmas

Escalation

So last time I posted a picture of me with my head shaved. I couldn't leave well enough alone, so that night at the station I went ahead and took a razor to it and went on down to the skin. If you've never done this before, it was pretty dang weird feeling! My head was pretty sensitive too. I did it again last night (since some of the guys I work with were off last shift and didn't get to see it) and it wasn't nearly as tender. It's also pretty amazing how fast the hair on your head grows.



Of course, any idea this cool is bound to have imitators.



They're just pretenders, of course. I think I was the only one of us who took it all the way down to the skin. April is not a fan, so I'll be growing it out. I kinda liked having it shaved, but I could probably do with it being a little longer. Luckily they allowed us to finally wear 'watch caps' at work, so my little bald head stayed warm today.

On another note, we got our tree put up too. We had a system, I picked up the tree and got it put on the base, then got the stuff down out of the attic. April handled the lights and decorations. I like our system.



Anyhow, that's about it for now. Talk to ya'll later.

#100

I just noticed this is my 100th blog. I guess I should have had something monumental or special to write about, to commemorate the event, but I don't. Instead I have a link to some pictures for you. One of our guys has been diagnosed with cancer, and he has started chemo and radiation therapy. Rather than let the drugs strip his hair from him, he decided to go ahead and shave his head. You know us firefighters, we can't do anything without each other, so most of the shift pitched in and got our heads shaved too.

Here ya go. For some reason I can't get the link to work, so you'll have to copy and paste it into your browser. Sorry!

http://picasaweb.google.com/gregory.becky/FirefightersUnifiedForRicky?authkey=Gv1sRgCI7kkez6mYOinwE&feat=email#

Hope ya'll enjoy.