Well, if I’ve learned nothing else during this renovation Joe and I are extremely effective at making a lot of noise and making a mess. It was decided that the particle wood sub floor in the entryway had to go but, as well as being good at messes and noise, we are also very quick at demolition these days. In the matter of about an hour we had that floor up and in a pile. A couple nights later I hauled it to the dumpster (see – another full dumpster) and then I attacked what was left of the linoleum covering the floor this weekend and about five thousand nails left behind. I cleaned it all up and hauled it all off, see further down – clean entryway. It feels better now when we walk in and I contribute that to a couple of things. 1) that is one very low ceiling and even that half inch of particle wood gone is still something. 2) the particle wood sub floor had been in bad shape from water damage and the old stick down tile had half come off so it felt uneven when you walked on it (just enough to give the unconscious impression that it just wasn’t solid). Now it feels solid – wish we didn’t have to cover up the old floor that we uncovered but then everything would be REALLY uneven. This way the entry floor and the old wood shed floor will be level so, once the new flooring comes in, you won’t be able to tell where one room ended and the other began.

What kind of “new” flooring am I going to be putting in you ask? I’m surprised you ask – of course it will be wood. I can’t afford “wood” floors though – at least not the kind that come in a box with instructions on how to rent a wood floor nailer. No, I had three choices when it came to a floor I could afford – there was 1) pallet wood. 2) buy oak plywood and cut it into strips. Or 3) just order 150 of those 1x4s that I’m gonna use for trim and tack them down with confidence. Lucky #3 won out just out of convenience and expense, I don’t have a table saw so getting the oak plywood cut down would have been more of a hassle and determining the cost of using palettes would have required a phone call – I don’t like phone calls. The 1x4s I’m talking about we can get for about $1 a 12 foot board and you really can’t beat that. Yup, they’ll be pine so it won’t be fancy but they’ll look like real wood because they are real wood and we’ll sand them down with the rest of the flooring in the house… I’m actually quite excited about this choice 🙂 As a rule I actually hate the wood floors that you buy at Menards or Home Depot or Lowes, I haven’t touched one of them that actually looked or felt like real wood to me… but I know, I’m weird. I would have been really happy just to sand down the ancient tongue and groove pine that’s there now – that is what I call a real wood floor!

We got the second of three off-peak heaters now installed (why I never seem to remember to take a picture of these things for you guys is beyond me) and I turned them on last night so, hopefully, the house will finally start warming up for real. I also swept out the rest of the house and got a few more things organized and cleaned up… I’m really just killing time for when I can turn the plumbing on and finally get that all done. Joe finished up our “wood shed” (the closet under the stairs) with plywood walls so we can throw wood in there to heart’s content now without hurting anything else. He did a good job and I was probably more excited about it then any human should have been but it’s really just nice to see something truly DONE that I didn’t do lol. Is spring here yet?