Flat Amy

Remember last post where I was letting some floor levelizing cement dry?  Turns out I mis-mixed that cement and it turned into a minor disaster, solidifying into a dried up lakebed:

After much rip up and many apologies to my overworked vacuums, I finally got it right on the 4th application:

Then continued laying planks nights and weekends:

Here I am on row 100:

For my 25 IBM anniversary 5 years ago I got a nice set of DeWalt cordless tools. Finally put them to good use:

My $110 table saw has also been getting a good workout. I figured about 300 cuts so far:

Last weekend, I finished the living room!  See if you can tell the difference … before:

And after:

As a reward, I treated myself to a floor cleaning robot.  This guy is a $300 Mint 5200:

Unlike the Roombas, these guys don’t vacuum up stuff, they collect it on their replaceable Swiffer or washable microfiber cloths.  Works great!

Next up is our bedroom.  I got the carpet ripped out … if anyone one wants some used stuff, only partially pet peed, I have a nice pile:

I had intentions on laying the bedroom floor his weekend, but I tweaked my back, so am taking a flooring break for a bit.

Yesterday I wandered around Park City while Helen presented and attended at a conference.   I had the most fun wandering around the trails around the 2002 Olympic jumps.   This one has artificial snow with a big pool at the bottom they fill up in the summer so they can practice all year round:

One of our friends from New York, Amy, sent us flat version of herself to take on some adventures and then send back to her school with stories and pictures.   Her she is contemplating the long jump:

If you look closely, you can see here joining this billboard sized sledder for a ride:

This is at the start of the bobslead run … just after I took this, a wind gust took Amy and dropped her deep underneath the bobsled track.    The tracks were closed, and nobody else was around, so I slipped under the fenced and rescued her.

After that Flat Amy was ready to return to New York.

Bruce

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One more … I’m going to skip the caption for this one.    If I tried one, you all would start having an unsettling sense of Déjà vu.

1/2 floored

Our flooring makeover is in full swing.  I’m waiting for some cement to dry, so time to post!

A construction (rather de-construction) mystery photo:

This is our basement, as it was last month:

And this is it today.   Note, the poky, dying cactus on the right didn’t make it to the new home … he is now outside. I never liked him much as he is they guy who killed 2 of our sitting balls.

We decided on tiling the stairs, rather than wood:

That mystery photo was a closeup of the carnage left in the wake of my destruction of the glass fireplace hearth.  They used a lot of glue putting those mirrors down!

I’d like to take credit for the stone and tile work, but that goes to the pros, Noah and his brother.  They did a great job!

They finished last week and I started on the living room wood flooring.   The carpet under my workstation was the last of the living room carpet to go … I worked off the floor for part of one night:

I invested in a $110 table saw:

And 3000 lbs, ($3k for 1100 sq feet),  of 14 mm laminate flooring:

I started in the corner last weekend:

We had a guest for the week, Irena.   She helped me here by standing on the floor while I hammered it:

After 2 weekends, here is the current state, about 1/3 done:

I messed up two cuts for circular floor outlets before we got smart on how to mark them more accurately.  I was looking for lipstick, to paint on the outlet to transfer to the plank, but Helen doesn’t use lipstick (neither do I).   So she suggested deodorant instead, works great!

There are several places our floor is not level enough, so I poured about 200 lbs of levelizing cement, which is drying now:

Looking at my photos for the month, the only non-flooring photos I have are from when we took Boris and Irena to our first concert at the Salt Lake Symphony Hall:

They have one of those amazing, but (in my opinion) fairly ugly glass sculptures by that famous one-eyed glass blower in the lobby:

Next month I’m guessing you will get more floor photos.   Sorry about that.  After that set, you will probably be safe from floor photos for a couple of more decades.