days five & six

Day 5 was Saturday 

(on Sunday, day 6, we all rested :) )

They came about 10am and worked for a few hours, until they ran out out of wood. A few feet in the family room left and then the little hall and the wood is installed!

Then the sanding/staining process begins. 

Entry is done.

The coat closet- which I might turn into my cleaning closet.. There isn't any place to put the vacuum on the main floor! 

day four

Wood floors...

Today the guys worked and worked! They got a lot done and surprised me with great news.  The head guy- Potts, and I were talking in the beginning of all of this and I told him I didn't want any red, orange or yellow in the floors... They had priced us out for red oak and we have though all of this time that is what we got. Dave even made a comment last night how there wasn't really any red in the oak and how nice that was. Today, Potts made some sample stains for us to get an idea of colors and he mentioned that because I had told him I didn't want any red he went with white oak- so they aren't red oak floors, they are white oak. The best part is white oak is harder (not a ton but still, harder!) on the Janka Wood Hardness scale, which is really important to us with a big dog and three boys. I will take it! I love these guys. Totally would recommend them.

Since we decided to put wood in the family room also, we needed to move all of the furniture out and pull up the carpet etc... Our GC's demo guys were busy so we did it ourselves (with the help of a boy from our ward) on Friday night. Potts said they would come and work on the floors on Saturday too if we could get it done, so we did it!

Then Dave got to do some more demo. We are putting the wood straight up to the fireplace. Someday we will put in a real mantle (wood not drywall) and replace the tile, probably with brick, but we want to have the option of having the wood up against the wall if I decide I don't want a hearth.

Colby seems to like the wood...

In front of the windows partof the subfloor was black and there seemed to be some water damage, so we took our trusty Kilz sealer and sealed the black areas up, just to be safe. 

Ready for wood

Options for stain colors... 

We are deciding between the middle two.

day three

Today was all about the wood floors & figuring out that last column. We changed our internet and home phone provider that day too so between dealing with the column and the installer coming I had to be home all day. The boys played in the cul-de-sac until about 2pm! Bubbles, bikes, snacks, sidewalk chalk, playing with the neighbor kids... In the afternoon we played board games inside, cleaned their room and of course the boys kept an eye on the workers :)

The remaining column. They replaced what was there with some big boards (2x6's). At one point we were told that we might be able to take it out too. We called the engineer and he wanted to see how far the LAM beams went, so we had a guy tear into a wall. 

In looking up you could see that the LAM beam was still up there, but you couldn't see how far it went. We decided that we would rather just keep the column to be safe rather than tearing up more walls (and have to fix them) and possibly have to keep it anyway. 

Looking into the living/library room. 

Kitchen

 This is how it was when they left at 6pm. 

Living/Library

Kitchen

 Entry - they got the edges for all of the steps in... it is finally starting to come together, love it!

Standing in the corner of the kitchen looking out.

Then at 7pm we had a knock at the door. The main construction guy wanted to re-enforce the column with a top plate and thicken the column so it is now square..

day two

This was a busy day! They demoed the whole kitchen, tile floor and the hardwood guys kept laying floor...

A  hiccup- I came home (took the boys to the $1 summer movie to get out of the house) and the middle column was out, with no support! I freaked out a little, called Dave who called our GC (general contractor) and he said it wasn't load bearing! AHHH that's not what the 

structural engineer had said.

Long story short, after sending the structural engineer new pics of what was under where the column was he agreed that it wasn't... So no beam! I am thrilled about that. Saves us a bunch of money and it will look a lot better without it. 

We then decided that we should put the money that was going towards the beam into putting hardwood through the family room too. I still want a big padded rug in there, with the boys wrestling and playing tackle etc in there so much, the floor needs to be soft. I will probably cut the carpet that is there now into a large area rug and finish off the edges and possibly even put the carpet pad underneath it... In the end I think we will be happy that there is wood in there too. 

 The old cabinets went to the garage..

Messy!

Time to demo the tile

These guys were so FAST!

Here is the bottom of the remaining column.. 

more on this on day 3.

They didn't know they needed to take out the column near the wall too, so we got to watch them. 

They cut the edge off of the step in the entry :)

This is what is under the middle column. LAM beams are super strong I guess. 

 Ahhh all cleaned up. This is where the kitchen was!

The dining room floor at the end of day 2. 

Living/library room floor. 

I am glad all of the demo is done, time to start making things look better!!!