Friday, December 01, 2006

Thawing out & catching up

Temperatures are back in the 40s and the snow is melting away, so last night Cary and I went out to the house to see what was new. It was quite impressive - there were 3 days worth of work we hadn't seen. The biggest, most fun thing to see was the cork flooring in the living room & kitchen:
Isn't it pretty? It goes really nicely with the Cherry cabinets, which I was a little bit worried about. The grain/texture is totally different, but the color tones are similar so it really works. It feels really good to walk on too, it has just the right amount of give to it. In the right forground you can see (under the bucket and stuff) the slate tiles which will be the floor of the hearth.

The painting crew had masked off most of the upstairs trim, ready to paint.
They actually started painting the trim in the bedrooms, but they used the wrong color (they painted it the same color as the walls - it's invisitrim!). They figured it out and were just waiting for it to dry so they could go over it with the correct color today. The masking is what takes all the time anyhow, so it's not too big of a deal.

The painters also brought back all the doors, which they had taken off-site a few days ago so they could paint them in their facility. They'll go back on their hinges after all the trim is painted and the masking is removed.
Steve continued putting up more trim around the interior, including the baseboard trim on the stairs, which is kind of tricky stuff. Exhibit A: the tetris trim...
I don't even want to think about how many cuts that peice took. :)

Today Mark was going to start on the hearth wall tiling. It'll be tiled with the same brazilian black/grey state tiles as under the stove, but going up the walls (mounted to fire-proof cementboard). There'll be an airspace between the cementboard and the sheetrock for additional protection against catching the walls on fire. This air space will also create a small convective heat exchange, which will also be nice.

Also today, Al was hopefully going to come back and finish the laminate on the kitchen countertops, assuming the snow has melted enough for him to get out of his driveway. Fingers crossed!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OOOhhhh... Cork floors. I'm drooling over the sample I got from iFloors, but I'm worried about it's resilience. You'll have to let us know how they hold up once you start living on them.

Thanks for the birthday wishes... here's a belated Happy Birthday for you!

Addie said...

The first thing I can tell you about them is they seem quiet. You can stomp across the floor with hard-soled shoes and it's still not very loud. There's no sharp tak-tak-tak like with hardwood, the sound is muffled and dulled by the cork. The floor also has a bit of give to it, not squishy or anything but definately an improvement from the concrete.