Hello again, it's been a month since my last post so there is quite a little to share. Starting where we left off:
Work continued on the wood floor and I managed to get a few more rooms done. When we last spoke I was waiting for the wood floor vents, so there we shall begin.
Gina found a company on the internet that manufactures these maple floor registers and I think they look great compared to the steel ones on wood floors. Since they arrived I was able to finish up the master bedroom. Below is the master closet.
And finally the orange bedroom.
This was all the farther I was able to get on the flooring before I ran into an issue I have been afraid I would have for quite a while now....
This picture is taken from the doorway looking down the hallway. We had our maple flooring milled for us by Fishsticks millwork in Janesville, IA. One of the things I love about it is that there is not a piece of flooring under 9' long. This makes for a very nice looking installation but also causes the problem that you can't build up width wise very quickly when laying it. In order to get into the last bedroom I have to do I would have to lay the majority of the flooring out in the kitchen/dining room.
As you may recall I have the drywall hung on the ceiling, but not on the walls. This is because we did not have a firm plan for the kitchen drawn up prior to this time and that prevented me from wiring. Since the room is not drywalled, I would have to do that after the flooring was down, which normally wouldn't bother me. But with a 14' high peak in that room the only good way to get to that is on my scaffold which I am not real keen on rolling around on a newly installed wood floor.
The end result is that we had to adjust our plans and not finish the bedrooms and bathrooms first like we had planned, and we have now drawn up our basic kitchen plans and I have begun the wiring so I can finish the sheetrock before I continue with the floor. Below is a shot of a section of the sub floor removed in the kitchen.
Because of the vaulted ceiling in this room I did not run my wiring overhead like I did in the rest of the house. I did this due to the lack of accessibility to the wiring if anything ever would need repaired or added. The bad part is that there is only a crawl space under this section of the house and it is only about 1.5' deep below the floor joists. I don't know about all of you, but sliding myself flat on my back around a dirt crawl space is not my idea of a good time, so I decided to cut out the sub floor and do it from above.
I hope to have the wiring wrapped up next weekend and then start drywalling.
And now you are thinking to yourself..... is that all he's done over this last month?
No, indeed it is not all. I also decided to do some of the finish wiring in the bedrooms. I figured a morning would be enough time. After all it is just the trim on the can lights and installing the outlets and the plate covers. All went well until I went to install the two wall arm lamps in our master bedroom.
Gina and I both like to read in bed sometimes, but typically she's in the mood to read when I'm in the mood to sleep and vice versa. Sound familiar to any of you? Well she found just the solution in these adjustable wall lamps. When she ordered them she asked the seemingly helpful and well informed customer service rep if these could be hard wired instead of plugging them into an outlet. He replied that they certainly could and that it would be quite easy to do. Gina then asked if there was anything special we should do with the framing while roughing the wiring in. He replied that the lamps would work with a standard light box.
He lied. And installing the two lamps took me an entire day. I learned my lesson (unfortunately not for the first or probably the last time) that you should always have all your fixtures ahead of time, open them up and thoroughly plan their installation long before hanging drywall. In the end I did emerge victorious (and without doing any major damage to the drywall!) but in a pretty crabby mood.
After the lamp fiasco I decided a break was in order, and decided it was time to finish up the master bathroom cabinets. So I spent a weekend at the dad's shop and used the CNC machine to cut out my drawers and doors.
As you can see above the machine cuts all the joinery including the dovetails, and all that is left is to assemble and finish the drawers. It even prints labels so you know what part go to which drawer, making it easy to cut dozens of drawers at a time and keep everything straight. We use plywood that is prefinished on one side so the inside of the drawer is done. We used to use plywood that was fished on both sides, but we usually sanded off all the finish on the outside when sanding the dovetails.
The machine also cuts all the parts for the cabinet doors (again with labels).
No prefinishing here because you have to sand the joints perfect. Below are a few of the doors assembled, sanded and with the first coat of finish.
So in one weekend I was able to get 15 drawers and 13 doors cut out, assembled, sanded and a first coat of finish on the doors. No way would that be possible without the machine. Thanks for letting me take the shop over for a few days Dad!
So there is the month in review. Over the next few weeks, I'll try to get the wiring wrapped up in the great room and get the sheetrock hung. Hopefully I can be flooring again by Christmas.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!