Moving inside - winter 2014-15 - Mainly wood floor

Wrapping up the deck railings and the front entry posts was about the last of the work outside for the year.  I did get some exterior stain and stained the posts and the beams for the front entry and also did the Big Beam inside (plus the little bit outside under the eaves).  I only have a shot of the Big Beam here, but you will see the front entry in other photos coming up.  I also stained and put up crown molding between the beam and ceiling while everything was wide open and we had the scaffold set up.  Much easier to handle long sticks 12' in the air at this point.  You can see some of the bare bulb fixtures used to get past final inspection here too (need something in place).

In the mean time, we were having the most colorful fall I have ever seen up here.  The prevailing type of forest here is called "Oak Savannah" as it is a mix of oak, poplar, and a few other minor species.  Our property is heavily oak (white and red), basswood, poplar, and a very small number of maple and cherry trees.  Oaks are great, but their fall colors are not.  Same with Basswood and poplar.  Oaks go brown for the most part, and the other two go dull yellow.  Maples have great colors, but there are not that many here.  Well the conditions that year were just perfect, and colors popped like crazy.  Bella went around taking some photos of the colors while I was working on the house, so lets enjoy those here as a break, shall we?  Frankly the photos do not do this justice.  It was amazing in person.  You'll have to take my word for it...

So getting that stain in place was critical so the wood did not sit out bare for another winter and risk rot starting.  After that, it was pretty much moving inside as we are now into late Oct 2014, and winter came early and hard that year.  One more task that was needed for final inspection was the suspended ceiling in the guest BR.  The master bath is above this, and that has not been started yet, so there are a lot of things that we will need access to up above.  Plus with all that plumbing, the risk of a leak causing trouble down the road lead me to put in a suspended ceiling here.  I already posted a pic of the ceiling, but here it is mostly complete.  Note I am jumping ahead as we put up all the supports in the fall, but I never came back to fill in the smaller support pieces or finish it by putting in the tiles until Spring 2015.  Final inspection was much later than I had hoped...  I was short a couple tiles, but that was an easy fix to get another pack and drop those in a few days later.

The big project for the fall-winter 2014 was the wood floor.  Like everything, this had its challenges...  For starters, as I started breaking into the wood floor bundles, I found a couple surprises.  They were good about leaving the lengths long, but they really shorted me on the grading, in my opinion.  I paid for select, but frankly got something closer to #1 common.  It wasn't horrible, but frankly it was a bit misrepresented by the seller (an outfit from up north in Wisc).  Because the lengths were mostly long, I was able to (and had to...) spend time chopping out defects before I hauled it up into the house.  I spent about 2 weeks, mostly evenings, just chopping down flooring into smaller pieces to get out the worst of the defects.  I left a lot of small defects as they do add some character to it, and I was afraid I was going to come up short given that I had to chop so much.  Based on the end result - I was very close and only had a very small amount leftover.  I was able to use the lesser boards in closets and areas that would be hidden for the most part.  Pretty much normal practice, but I was still quite annoyed that I didn't really get what I paid for.

So a couple weeks of cutting like a madman, and I started hauling stuff into the house to help it acclimate better.  More time for this would have been better, but the show must go on...  The radiant heat was not done for the winter 2014, but fortunately we had the regular furnace, so we could keep it heated decently.  Here is the main pile in the great room being assembled.  I also did a smaller pile in the office and on the upper floor.

This is divided into 3 widths as the flooring came in random widths (3", 4", 5")  This is something I actually liked about it as it helps keeps the pattern looking a lot more interesting.  You can see the 5" on the left, and the 4" in the middle, 3" on the right.  This is sitting where the kitchen tile will go, so it won't be in the way and need to be moved a bunch of times.

We started with the upper floor as it is less visible there and a better place to debug our process and get a rhythm going.  My friend Brook helped out here for the first couple days, and then came back later on to help on the main floor for a day or two.  Here is the upper floor all nailed down ready for sanding.  I made the nosing for the transition to the stairs out of some stock I had on hand.  In one day Brook and I pretty much nailed down the main field, stopping just short of the far wall a foot or so.  The next couple nights I finished that up and did the area by the stairs.  This was about a week before Thanksgiving.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Brook came back to help me start out the main floor.  The beginning of this was a little tricky with getting the long run from one end of the house to the other nice and straight, but after that, it started to go together pretty quickly.  We got a good stripe done that day, and I continued a bit farther solo that evening after he had to leave.  Certainly is a lot faster with 2...  I got a couple feet done solo from the corner you see at the upper right (the stuff closer in the pic)

Proceeded to frame in the Kitchen tile area and move towards the door over the next few evenings finishing this part off the evening before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving day and Black Friday I went the other direction in the great room and hallway, and started the run into the office and powder room through the foyer.  Brook was back to help for one of these days, so that moved it along quicker.  The framed-out space where the orange bucket is, is where the fireplace will go.  They will tile that in:

Those last couple photos... Right about then was when I got The Phone Call from Bella that said "Mom fell".  Well it was pretty bad as she was starting to get the old house ready to sell and was up on the kitchen counters cleaning out cabinets when she stepped back into air and fell ~3' down flat on her back.  The good news, after a trip to the ER, was that there was nothing serious wrong - no serious back injuries or anything major broken, but she did crack her shoulder bones a bit and her back was very sore for quite a long time (many months...).  The shoulder still bothers her a year later, but the lucky part was that it was nothing life-threatening or seriously debilitating, which it easily could have been.  So with that bit o' fun behind us, more or less, it was back to finishing up the flooring.  This was a few evenings and a weekend, I think.  But all wood was finally nailed down.

I also did the 2 stair landings last.  Here is one.

And remember how I was worried about running out?  Here is the sum total of anything left that was usable when I finished the last stair landing.  Given that I covered 1400+ sq ft of floor, this is cutting it very close...

I don't have any photos of sanding the floor as that was endless hours of me solo running the sanders back and forth.  Not much to see...But here is the drum sander:

And finish.  Finally.  The finish took 2 days.  Brook and I did this the 2 days right after Xmas.  The first day was the sealer coat as that needed a day to dry.  The next day was a quick "screening" the the floor buffer and then 2 finish coats.  This is a really tough catalyzed Polyurethane finish that really holds up well (Bona Traffic).  2 coats applied about 4 hrs apart and we were good to go.

Here is the wet sealer coat:

And the finish completed:

Long post...  That's it for this one, and puts us right about the end of 2014.  From there things changed up a bit as we pretty much spent the rest of the Xmas break and all of Jan, and at least half of Feb working on the old house getting it ready to sell.  Mostly painting and clearing stuff out, plus having a bunch of flooring/carpet replaced. So it was a good couple months until I seriously got back to working on the new house.

Oh - One thing I forgot to mention was the stained concrete in the basement.  Mid Nov, I had a concrete guy come in and stain the floor and seal it.  That was one of the last things we needed to be able to move stuff into the new house.  That was also important for getting the plumbers back to finish off their work for the final inspection as the lower level bathroom was the key one for passing final.  Needed the floor finished so they could set the toilet.  I don't have any direct photos of that, but it will show up in other shots here.

So now I'm only 1 year behind, instead of 14 months...