Happy birthday to meee

I hate to admit it, but I just might have found the one renovation task that, well, I actually enjoy. I've certainly expounded at length on how much drywalling or insulating or digging sucks, but there have been precious few tasks that I've admitted to not hating.

Flooring, on the other hand... well, I actually LIKE it. I mean, if I didn't enjoy it, why would I spend the entire day - on my birthday of all days - looking forward to leaving work so I could get home and do some more of the flooring in my office? I even considered bailing out early so I'd have more time to work on it and maybe even get it all done before bed, instead of having to finish it later in the week. (As it turns out, I didn't leave early, and I therefore had to finish it later in the week, but hey - I actually looked forward to that part, too.)

Anyway, I thought that maybe the best way to explain why I like it would be to try and document the process. So, without further ado, this is how to lay an engineered hardwood floor - the Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno way.

The first step is to clean, scrape, sweep, patch, fill, and prep the subfloor. This may, as in our case, include a half-box of coated floor screws driven in every eight inches or so along the joists to tighten up any warped boards and reduce the amount of squeaking. If you have a War Department, get her to to do it: she's really good at it. Also, get her to patch the floor if you can, because that stuff is hard to work with and she's probably already got the knee pads on from putting in the screws anyway.

So, once the patching compound is dry, give the room a good sweep and a quick vacuum, and you should have something like this:



Nice colour, eh? It's yet another Restoration Hardware-inspired choice, called "butter". (We used the "saffron" from the same collection in our bedroom, and the "butter cream" in the downstairs hallway.)

The next step is to gather all your tools. If you're like us (and who isn't?) you probably keep all of your tools in the garage, which requires several hundred trips up and down the stairs because of course you're working on the room that is the furthest you can possibly get from the garage and still be in the same house. Once you've gathered everything you think you will possibly need, organize them on the opposite side of the room from where you intend to start putting down your floor:



From left to right (mostly), the assembled tools are:

• Work light: used to mess up your sense of time so you can keep working long after it gets dark and you should have stopped for something to eat.


• Ear protection: almost everything you're working with is LOUD. Especially the compressor.


• Hammer: used for pounding things, like staples that didn't go in quite far enough.


• Nail set: (hidden behind the hammer) used to keep the hammer from hitting the flooring and wrecking the edges when a staple didn't go in quite far enough.


• Screwdriver: not required, actually, unless you left it downstairs, in which case you WOULD need it and have to go downstairs (again) to get it.


• Box cutter: used for cutting the underpad and (sometimes) fingers, and opening the boxes.


• Safety gogglers: like the screwdriver, completely unnecessary unless you don't have them, in which case a freak, never-happen-again-in-a-million-years accident will send a staple directly into your eye socket. (I wore mine.)


• Pencil: used to make pencil marks.


• Tape measure: used to determine where the pencil marks should go.


• Brad nailer: not actually the ideal tool for this. We really should be using 16-gauge nails, but our little nailer only takes 18-gauge. Given that the flooring is really light, however, and I can make up for the weaker nails by using more of them, I figure we can get away with it.


• Stapler: used to pin down the underpad to the subfloor so it doesn't move around while you're trying to work on it.


• Floor stapler: I love this thing. It's my second favourite tool, behind the reciprocating saw (of course).


• Big-ass box of staples: surprisingly economical, given how much the smaller packs cost. I'll never use these up - not in this house, anyway - but it was still cheaper than trying to buy a bunch of smaller boxes.


• Way-too-long air hose: seriously - WAY too long.


• The Incredible Hulk: our Kawasaki air compressor that we bought for a ridiculous price at Costco. This thing is loud, large, and in charge, baby. And really hard to get up the stairs. I actually filled it up while it was still in the garage because it's REALLY loud, and I figured the cats would appreciate not having the Hulk roaring away on a bare wooden floor for half-an-hour.


• Big roll of underpad: there should be lots left over to do the War Room.

Also required, but not shown (and therefore most likely requiring a separate trip back downstairs to fetch them when you realize you've forgotten them):

• Flooring blocks: used to brace against the lip/edges of the flooring so you can whack them into place with the hammer without having to whale directly on the floor. Still can't believe I forgot about these things when I was prepping - you literally can't do flooring without them.


• Scrap blocks: used to ensure you have adequate space around the edges of the floor to allow for expansion.


• Broom: to make sure there aren't any little bits of wood or other debris underneath the underpad before you staple it all down.


• Magic bar: to pry up the first row after you screw it up (I'll get to that in a minute).


• Pliers: to pull out staples that didn't go in anywhere close to far enough.


• Knee pads: cause, otherwise, your back is going to burn like the fire. Oh, and your knees, too.


• Chalk line: trust me on this one.

So, once all of the necessary tools and materials have been gathered (the actual flooring itself - Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron - has been sitting in the upstairs hallways and bedroom closets for more than a year; it's the one thing I DIDN'T have to bring up from downstairs), it's time to get busy.

I started by measuring the width of the room to make sure that the last row wouldn't wind up being an inch thick or anything. Luckily, the room size and the width of the planks match up fairly well, and the final row should be about four inches - close enough for government work! Let's get started!

The first step is to lay down a piece of underpad. The stuff we're using is supposedly designed for maximum noise reduction under engineered hardwood, and we got a big roll of it when we got the floor. Next, I grabbed a few likely pieces of our fine flooring and started laying them out.

Now, when working that close to the wall, you can't use the flooring stapler because the handle and the magazine for the staples stick out the back - you simply can't get the tool close enough to the wall to place it over the tongue of the flooring (unless you've got 12" wide planks, which... we don't). So you have to use either a hammer and nails, or - like me - a brad nailer held at just the right angle. It also means you have to be extra careful putting in the first few pieces - which I certainly THOUGHT I was.

Uh, not so much. The first row I put it looked okay, but once I started laying out the second row, I realized I didn't quite have it perfectly straight - the next pieces were not fitting anywhere near tightly enough. So I pulled them all up and tried again.

The next attempt seemed to go in quite a bit better, and I even got the floor stapler going to snug up the second row. Unfortunately, once I took a closer look, I realized that I had followed the wall a little too closely - because the wall was curved.

You can't see it in this picture, but trust me, this is not good enough:



So I ripped it all up again, and did what I should have done the first time: asked the War Department what I was doing wrong. She suggested that we get the chalk line out, and measure equal points from the far wall - that way the flooring would stay straight as it came across the room. We did, and snapped a nice clean line that I could use to line up the first row of planks.

Much as I hate to admit it (any more than I absolutely have to, anyway), she was totally right, and the third try produced a nice, tight, straight first row that only looked better once the second and third rows were installed. (It's a good thing we've got extra wood!)



Once I got to the fourth row, however, I had to deal with the first finicky bit; the closet opening:



Fortunately, I had actually planned ahead (shocker, I know) and aside from having to make a couple of extra trips up and down the damn stairs to trim up the inside piece on the table saw, I managed to wrap the wood around without any problems, and got in a couple more rows before I ran out of working hours and had to call it a night:





The next night was actually my birthday, and with the War Department out at the opera (gettin' sum kulcher), I was free to keep plugging away at it to my heart's content. Which I did. Got a fair bit done, too; I was doing so well, I had to stop and remind myself to take a picture so as not to let it all get away from me (I had to move the compressor and work light to the other side of the room anyway):



And here's where I stopped for the night and treated myself to one of the excellent Scottish beers my Crazy Neighbour™ left on the front steps for me in honour of my birthday (seriously, is there anything in this world better than free surprise beer? I doubt it...)



It was actually about 10:30 at that point, and I had reached the limit of what I could do with the floor stapler. See, you need a fair amount of room on the front side of the stapler too, what with having to swing the big-ass mallet around to drive in the staples. From that point on, it would be mostly the nail gun and a lot of finicky work around the door opening and up against the wall, and I was utterly gassed.

I couldn't work on it Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I geared up again and, after a quick jaunt over to Home Despot to pick up some more nails for the nailer, I got right back at it and finished it all off:





Even tidied up a really narrow bit tight up against the wall inside the closet, too:



All in all, I'm quite pleased. It looks really good, and the War Department did a great job of locking down the subfloor, so it's really solid and doesn't squeak a bit. So now, it's off to Rona to get some trim, and then the fiddly stuff REALLY gets going.

While you're all here, though, it's been a while, so here's another edition of everyone's favorite feature,

The Injury Report

The good news is that I didn't hurt myself while doing the floor and therefore avoided splashing blood all over the new hardwood. No, it was actually a couple of weeks ago that I smashed my left hand with a hammer and walked around with a bit of a bruise for a few days.

Why did I smash my hand?
See, I was fixing an axe, and trying to knock the old handle out of the axe head. I was holding the axe head on a stump while swinging at it with a hammer. I missed the piece of metal I was using to drive out the handle, and whacked myself a good one right on the base of my thumb.

Why was I fixing my axe?
It's not my axe, it's Amy's.

Why was I fixing Amy's axe?
Because I broke it. Again.

What do I mean, again?
Well, TECHNICALLY, it's the first time I've broken THIS axe. Which is actually her splitting wedge. The other axe, well...

Did I break Amy's other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice.

How many times?
TWICE. (And no, despite what Amy says, I really only broke it twice. She says three times, but the "third" time I broke it, I hadn't fixed it from the second time yet, and I just, well, I finished breaking it - totally doesn't count as a separate break.)

Did I fix that other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice, now. After I finished fixing the splitting wedge, I fixed the other one. Again. So I fixed two axes that day I hurt my hand.



Am I going to break her axe again?
No.

Why not?
Because she won't let me use her axes anymore. I had to go and buy my own. Ones with fiberglass handles.

Why do I break so many axes?
Cause I'm good with tools.



In my defence, I've never broken her hatchet, and I've used it plenty of times.



Yes, I know it has a metal handle.

Shut up.

Enough lollygagging - let's do some renos!

Skip: "You lollygag the ball around the infield! You lollygag your way down to first! You lollygag your way in and out of the dugout! Do you know what that makes you? Larry!"

Larry: "Lollygaggers!"

Skip: "Lollygaggers!"

Sorry, but pitchers and catchers reported on Monday, and Spring Training begins for real this weekend. Whooo! Go Jays! Lollygaggers!


Ahem... moving on...

First of all, thank you everyone for your kinds words both here and on Facebook as we mourned the loss of our dear friend. I couldn't help but notice that nobody sent any money to help us replace it, but hey: it's the thought that counts and we appreciate the sentiment.

Now that the maudlin is out of the way, we can focus on what everyone really comes here to hear: me hurting myself! Well, I didn't this week (yet) so how about I just post some pictures or something and stop prattling on about baseball, hmm?

Sadly - man, this post is turning out just disappointment top to bottom, isn't it? - the pictures I have aren't all that interesting. Well, they're interesting to us, and seeing the changes in person is pretty impressive (our drywall guy is an absolute artiste), but the pictures are kinda sorta mostly blah. It's white on white again, I'm afraid.

So, the backstory first: for our next project, we had planned to tackle the remaining two bedrooms upstairs - my office and the War Department's office-slash-guest-room (I think I'll start calling it the War Room - ooh, I like that). After some long discussions and due consideration given to schedules, plans, and the turning of the seasons, we decided to just do one room at a time, instead of both together. We didn't want to have to find storage for all of the bookshelves, books, beds, desks, and other assorted crap - not to mention setting up an office downstairs in the living room or something - and then having our lives all disrupted and shit for three months or however long it was going to take us.

Instead, we packed up all of the books and other detritus in my office, and set up a temporary desk in the War Room for me (the War Department is using her netbook instead of her desktop machine until this round of renos is over, so full props to her for making that sacrifice). Once all the crap was out of the way, we cut back the valance in front of the windows, scraped the popcorn off the ceiling, and called in Tony, the Master Mudder, to work his magic.

Now, somehow, in my multitude of pictures, I have absolutely none showing my office in its "before" phase - like, prior to us doing anything. All I have is a few shots of the office after we took everything out, and cut back the drywall in preparation for Tony. I don't even have any pictures of it before we took the carpet out - well, except for the one from the original real estate listing:



Looks... a lot bigger than it really is, actually. Must be the lens, obviously, as it looked a lot smaller when we finished prepping for Tony:



It took Tony four trips (and a broken ignition switch - don't ask), but he worked his usual magic, and now it looks freaking amazing.



I took a lot more pictures than that, but like I said, it's white on white, and hard to make out any details anyway.

So that's where the project stands now. This weekend we'll get started priming the ceiling, cleaning the walls, and filling and sanding a few minor holes.

Oh, speaking of which, it's time yet again for...

This Week In Mayonnaise

I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I thought it worth mentioning that Tony noticed the mayonnaise on the walls of my soon-to-be-office. Well, considering he IS the professional, and probably more familiar with all the different types of wall patches available, I asked him what it was.

He had absolutely no freaking clue. None.


He did like the fact that we called it mayonnaise, though. And so the mystery deepens...

Saying farewall to an old friend

There comes a time in every relationship where, whether through death, fate, or ennui, it comes time to end it.

Oh, might be a good time to mention that I'm NOT talking about us - or the kitties for that matter. They're fine, if you can call yelling at us all the time and barfing on the rug every other day "fine", and I'm sure they do.

Where was I? Oh, right, the end of a relationship.

This particular relationship started way back in 2005, even before we began the renovations at the old place. It ended last weekend and to be honest, I'm not sure we're really over it yet.

One of the first things we had to do to the old house was replace the furnace. At the time, it made a lot of sense to also replace the unbelievably crappy stove that came with the house, and so the War Department forked over her ENTIRE bonus cheque (that she got when the company she worked for got bought out) and bought us the most wonderful gas range. Here it is on the very day they installed it:



She's a beauty, eh? Five burners, flat cooktop, convection oven, warming tray, all the bells and whistles.

We loved that stove from the moment we turned it on. We loved that stove when we cooked our Christmas dinners in it. We loved that stove to make quick meals during the week. We loved that stove so much that when we bought our new house, we specifically excluded it from the list of appliances that were to be included in the sale of the old house. We even paid for a professional gas fitter to come over and disconnect it, and wrapped it in blankets so the movers wouldn't scratch the finish. They loaded it carefully into the truck, and just as carefully unloaded it into our new garage.

Where it promptly sat for twelve months.

Oh, we shunted it around from one corner of the garage to the other, always moving it carefully and taking great pains not to scratch the finish. There wasn't much we could do: the new house didn't have gas service, and what with having to do the roof and everything else, the new gas line wasn't in the budget right away. So our poor, beautiful range sat in the garage while we cursed and hated the piece of crap that Frank left us.

Well, as I mentioned in the last post, we FINALLY had enough money to get the gas line put in. So after a fair amount of back-and-forth between and with Terasen and the local municipality (you'd think they do this all the time, but it just seemed like everything we were doing was the first time anyone had ever brought it up: "Natural gas? To your house? I've never heard of such a thing! Oh, wait, here's a form. Well, I'll be...") we finally got the gas line run. We even had some pictures of the process, thanks to our Crazy Neighbour™ who monitored the whole thing for us while we were at work.

Which I seem to have misplaced... oh well, they'll turn up.

Anyway, the gas line was installed, the fireplace was installed, and all we needed to do was install our old friend the gas range and we'd be - in the inimitable words of my friend Steve - "golden". Only one small problem.

Well, probably more like a half-a-dozen or so small problems. Small, brown, furry, problems.

You see, one of the side... er, benefits? of having so much wildlife in the neighbourhood is that some of said wildlife wants to live inside with you. Where it's warm. Failing that, they'll happily live somewhere sort-of-inside, where it might not be as warm, but where there are no predators and there's a good source of food. Like, say, a garage. Where there are bags of birdseed and peanuts (oh, someone PLEASE ask Amy about the peanuts), and nice tight crevices where they can build their nests. For example, in the side cavity of a crappy old freezer, or a beat-up old chest of drawers, or, well, a very nice stove.

Yeah. We had mice.

We actually had an exterminator come in a month or so after we bought the place, and he laid some traps in the attic (none of which were ever sprung, so THAT was good news) and in the garage. The ones in the garage were quite successful at catching little mouses, but not so much at not killing them, which upset the War Department somewhat. So we took the exterminator's advice and let the cats out into the garage once in a while so they could rub on things and leave the smell of a predator. It must have worked, at least a little, because the last trap never did get sprung, and I figured the mice had probably found a less-cat-infested home.

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, and they had made themselves a nice little home in the insulation in our beautiful gas range. Well, okay, we thought, we'll just have to clean it all out and replace the insulation. And when we called around to ask for parts, and looked online for advice, it seemed we certainly weren't the first people to have mice in a stove. So we ordered new insulation for it and once it (finally!) arrived, we asked our good friend Mr. Awesome to come over and give us a hand - he used to fix appliances, and was willing to work for beer; I call that a win-win.

We started taking the stove apart on a chilly Friday night a little more than a week ago, and it quickly became apparent that the damage was more extensive than we thought. The first few panels came off easily enough, and were put aside to be wiped down later.

Once we got the cooktop off, however, we found out just how bad it was:



And then it got worse:



And worse:







And then we found out that the idiots at the part store where we bought our replacement insulation only gave us enough insulation to do the top and sides, and not the back. So we left the carcass of our poor stove surrounded by its pieces, and waited until the next morning, when we could start calling around and hopefully find another piece of insulation.

Well, the next morning brought good news and bad news. The good news was that the War Department talked to an exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful person at West Coast Parts (not, unfortunately, the place we had ordered the original insulation from or we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble). The bad news was pretty much everything the guy told her.

You see, mouse pee is really, really, REALLY stinky. It's also pervasive, and mildly corrosive. The end result is that the smell is really difficult to get out - especially if the afflicted appliance were ever to get hot. You know, like a STOVE. Essentially, the only way to get the smell out - even from a metal panel - is to soak the part in a strong solution of janitorial cleaner (bleach doesn't work, apparently) and then let it dry for up to two weeks.

To cut a sad story short, after speaking to the technician and re-evaluating the extent of our infestation, we came to the reluctant conclusion that there was just no way we were EVER going to get the damn thing clean. The mouse pee was all over the electrical components, the burners, the gas lines, everything. It had seeped into the welds in the frame and the back of the box, and even onto the heat deflectors INSIDE the oven.

I think if it had been an electric stove, it might have been different, but we had to take all the gas lines off to get the panels apart, and there would have been no way to even test the thing without putting it all back together and installing it.

And so it was with a heavy heart and a great deal of reluctance that I loaded all the pieces (except for a few that I forgot, damn it) into the back of the pickup and hauled it all up to Hartland where it went straight into the recycling bin.

Yeah. Top of the line, and not even six years old. Finished. Talk about your expensive lessons. Anyway, I'm still too verklempft to continue. Throwing out that beautiful, wonderful, awesome stove really, really, really sucked.

(I think the worst part is that now I have to clean the burnt stuff out of the crappy old stove that I spilled turkey drippings in over the holidays. Stupid delicious turkey.)

Tune in next time for pictures of our next project (which we've already started)!

Happy New Year

To shamelessly steal a really good line from someone on Facebook, "Operation: Fat & Happy" was a resounding success. We are relaxed and contented after an exceptionally enjoyable holiday and we certainly enjoyed the hell out of all that seasonal food and drink. My waistline, on the other hand, well, let's just thank the great Christmas spirit for making stretchy pants and gym memberships, I suppose.

I hope everyone else had an equally enjoyable holiday - or at least not an inconceivably horrendous one - and is now, like us, ready to get back on the horse and get some shit DONE!

Last time, I mentioned that we were on a renocation again, or at least taking a hiatus from the renos. Well, it turns out that I had forgotten about that part of renovating that comes AFTER the renovations are finished: decorating!

We spent much of the holidays hanging paintings, buying furniture, installing fireplaces, and - what? Oh, yeah.

Remember this?



Turns out that the War Department wasn't impressed with the cardboard so much, and we shelled out a pretty penny to get one that actually, you know, gave off heat:



We actually had that done a week or two before Christmas, but Amy wanted to surprise the the Top Brass with it when they came out, so our loyal reader(s) had to wait for the big unveiling. In case you were wondering, yes, it kicks ass. And the cats sure seem to like it:



Also kicking ass: the Top Brass, whose ridiculously generous Christmas gift allowed us to continue kitting out our dining room AND living room.









The couches are on loan from my mom, and while they probably wouldn't have been our first choice in style or colour, they'll certainly do the trick for now. Besides, it's not like we'll be able to afford new ones any time soon.

We definitely still need some proper lighting, however, and although we have the perfect painting picked out for above the mantel, getting it requires a trip to the desolate northern wilds of the province, and visiting my parental units.

We also got a nice gift from one of the Chiefs of Staff, also known as the War Department's aunt... what? It's the best I could do. Shut up. So... yeah, anyway, we were wondering what we could put on the wall immediately across from the front door. It's sort of the first thing you see when you come into the house, so we knew we wanted something special. Luckily, she's a hell of a photographer:



Anyway, I apologize for the delay in posting, but it's been kind of hard to haul my fat ass all the way up the stairs. Oh, and in case you were wondering, one more weekend of tidying up the loose ends, and we're right back into the renos. Look out upstairs bedrooms! Here we come!