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.