Red is Gray and Yellow, White

The varnish is down. I used an oil-based finish to give some amber color to the wood. It takes a few days to dry completely so we are walking around in socks and speaking in whispers. We scold Willow whenever she starts her spinning and jumping and Snoopy dancing, which is more often that I ever noticed before.

For the next few weeks (or maybe months, or maybe forever), the floor will be too shiny for my tastes. As you can see, the light bounces off of it like water. This didn't happen in the dining room and laundry room, which are older floors, but the new floors are pretty glossy. I could buff them or I could lightly sand and touch them up. I could start all over if I wanted to.

The second photo is a shot from overhead, with Willow staring into the kitchen wondering why her food bowl is no longer in the corner (where it has always been) but is instead upstairs where she has been sequestered for several days.

There's nothing special about the color differences in these photos. We make these adjustments in our brains all day long while developing our own personal sense of the true nature of things. The floor is sort of amber in my mind. To Willow it looks like a vast Frisbee field. To Cheryl it finally looks finished and she can have the Christmas party (it's never too soon to start planning).

But the project goes on. Tomorrow I am painting base boards and getting some new quarter-round to install in all the rooms, back on my hands and knees using my new nail gun. We also need to pick up some nice tile to create a mosaic for the divider between the breakfast room and living room (a section that is now a gaping strip of concrete).

Oh yes, the project goes on. This is no time to sit and stare.

As Good As It Will Get

I must admit, I like to take sandpaper to wood. I like to see the grain reveal itself as the finer sand paper is applied. Sanding is an art form that can never be mastered, and it is a task that can never be finished.

I like sanding by hand and hearing the swish, swish of the paper. But for a job this size (because now I have added the dining room and laundry room, both of which need refinishing), I needed to rent some big tools. Big, loud, foul, bad-tempered, dangerous tools that cut things into tiny pieces. A drum sander can rip a layer of oak away in seconds, turning hardwood into a powder, which explains the picture to the right. I hung some plastic here and there to prevent the dust from wandering into other parts of the house. If Dexter had a thing for wood, it might look like this.

Normally, I am into big tools. I spent Sunday with the big sander, punishing my poor floor with brute force. Soon I learned that the sander would not reach several tight spaces in the kitchen and pantry and (almost to my relief) it became clear that I would need to be down on my hands and knees sanding by hand for three days, studying the boards face to face, working where the big sander could not reach. You might say "What a lucky guy, on his hands and knees for three days" but don't be so quick to envy me. You have your share of fun, too, I'm sure.

Willow drools and sheds hair and Cheryl spills things, and the poor, unfinished and defenceless floor could not survive without its protective coat for much longer. I cannot sand forever, no matter how much I might like. A deadline had to be imposed, and today was it. Time to varnish. So here I am, waiting for a coat of varnish to dry so that I can apply another.

Now there's nothing to do but wait. The time for sanding is past.

The Floor is Down

Here's Willow sitting in what now seems to be a very large breakfast room. I spent the day moving all my hand tools, table saw, air compressor, air gun, nails, screws, paint, tar paper and extra lumber (enough to do a small room) to the garage. All the plastic is off the floor, and now it's swept and vacuumed.



There's still more to do: rent a sander on Sunday, put on 3 coats of varnish--one each night before we go to bed so Willow doesn't get her paws in it. But now it is nice to see the clean, empty rooms. No more work today.


I took some pictures of the new threshold piece I created this morning. Sweet, but the pictures don't capture its true essence, how it just kisses the bottom of the door to the garage so that the smallest ant could not squeeze through even one of its little feeler things or butt whiskers (or whatever you call them). I showed the threshold to Cheryl and she pretended to be impressed (good enough for me).

Nature Break

About three feet to go and the floor will be down, not counting the parquet strip that is driven from my consciousness several times a day because I can't decide on the design.

Yesterday Cheryl came in all excited and said "you've got to come see this." Just outside, next to our stone porch, we have some cactus-looking plants that I've taken for granted since we moved in. But now they have these fantastic flowers coming from them. It's my intent in this blog to document each plant in our yard, to figure out what is there, what it is called, how not to kill it, and so on. I have a long way to go, starting with this plant (that fortunately appears to be pretty tough and able take care of itself).

But now it is back to the floor to finish it. Next step is sanding, then put down the finish. The parquet design will come to me in a dream, maybe?

Also, for years we have had orchids in the yard and in the house, and we haven't had luck getting them to bloom, but then we noticed this one yesterday. How cool! If you click on the photo, you will see the new blooms and Cheryl being pleased with herself for willing them into existence.

Threshold

Yesterday I began laying the floor in the breakfast room, but these boards run in the opposite direction (though I suppose it would be more correct to say that the breakfast room boards are perpendicular to the kitchen boards--not that it matters, but if the boards could be said to have a starting point and a direction, which in my mind they do not, the word opposite might imply that the boards would be running along the same line, like cars on the freeway, but maybe I haven't given this enough thought...)

Here's Willow sitting on the threshold between the kitchen and breakfast room . She and I have been discussing how best to design the transition from one room to another, and she is not in complete agreement with my design, but I can't fight with her about every single decision. The project needs to go forward or it will never be done.

Also notice the plastic. I spilled a drop of coffee on the floor yesterday and had to sand it out. Unfinished oak is like a sponge.

For some reason, when the previous owners remodeled the breakfast room they made the floor joists 1/4 inch higher than the kitchen floor joists. They compensated by using 1/2 inch plywood (instead of the standard 3/4 inch) for the subfloor. This decision caused the breakfast room floor to eventually sag and bounce around like a trampoline. I hope they can live with themselves.

Because I don't want to do this project again any time soon, I put a 3/4 inch subfloor in the breakfast room, making it 1/4 inch higher than kitchen, just enough to trip you if you are one of those people who just shuffles along, probably with bad posture and a bleak outlook. Please. Cheer up a little bit.

Here's a picture of the strip of oak I made yesterday to join the two rooms. I spent about 30 minutes making this piece, shaping just to fit the breakfast room (in the upper portion of the picture) and sloping down into the kitchen. I asked Cheryl if she thought I should nail it down (which might split the wood and cause me grief) or glue it down. I wondered if she would call me a wuss and dare me to nail it. But she recommended gluing it. Willow still refuses to comment.

Cheryl and I had an early anniversary dinner last night at a Brazilian restaurant. We had a very nice time. I remain the luckiest guy ever.

3 by 4 by 7

Yesterday in yoga class I was compelled to recognize how I had blown my inner peace. Anger is a poison that you give to yourself hoping to affect someone else. Martha, our instructor, is a really sensible, down-to-earth person, and she says these things (reading from various books) at the end of class while we are in Savasana.

It all started when I realized that the lumber store (a national chain of discount lumber) had short-changed me. The boards come in bundles, and it seemed like a lot of wood when I went to pick it up. So I didn't realize the problem until Tuesday. The facts were simple: I ordered 335 square feet and they gave me 265.

I've read that our brains are segmented according to evolutionary stages. The primative part of the brain prompts us to breathe and reacts to pain and pleasure. The newer part tends to favor one book over another and makes us want to be cool. When we get into unfamiliar territory, like cavemen lost in the woods at night trying to get back home, we tend to rely on the older part of the brain.

I had the facts straight when I called the lumber store. The bundles are 3 boards wide, 4 boards deep and 7 feet long. We learned this math in grade school so I didn't expect an argument. But on the phone the store manager assured me that I was wrong. He said he was looking at the paperwork from the home office--it was the final word. I tried to walk him through the math, and he would follow me to the end but then retreat into denial. The man was either a fool or...

Then something in the brain snapped. You do this for a living, goddammit! I shouted into the phone. I won't repeat the rest of the conversation. I did threaten to sue him at some point, so I can assume that the newer part of my brain also got in on the act. If reincarnation is a reality, I probably have moved from coming back as a toad to coming back as a worm.

About 30 minutes later I got a call from the regional supervisor who apologized, and today I will go to pick up the extra wood. May God have mercy on my soul.