Floors and Finishes

I haven't been doing a good job keeping track of the changes to the new place. When last I typed here, we were installing a fence. Since that time, the fence was completed, a fresh dumpster was delivered (seriously, this is the last dumpster, I swear), the garage got cleaned out, we painted every room and installed the hardwood floors. I only have pictures of the floor installation and living room paint. I neglected to take any photos of any of the other paint colors. Every time I would go to take a picture, there would be a big pile of trash in the way and I would get disgusted and put my camera or phone away, not wanting to share our messy home improvement ways with the world.







The walls in these photos are painted a Martha Stewart Living color, Magnetite, that I had matched by my MAB paint store. (I refuse to purchase paint from Home Depot or Lowe's, and we've always used MAB products in all of our paint projects.) CPM hates the color, but I love it. I keep telling him to wait and see, that the gray will be a great background for whatever colors we want to bring into the mix.

The floors are strand woven bamboo (in tiger) purchased from Ambient Bamboo. We chose the pattern by visiting a local Lumber Liquidators, then I did an internet search to see if I could get a better price on a similar product. Not only was the Ambient product better, but the plank size was much wider. Ambient shipped the product to me via UPS Freight, and I had to help the UPS guy unload the truck. That sucked, since it was cold and windy on the delivery day, and there were 50 boxes that each weighed 50 pounds divided between 2 skids. It got even better when one of the two skids just broke, so the boxes on that skid had to be unloaded from the UPS truck and taken to my front steps individually. Eventually I just gave up, piled the boxes on my lawn, and called CPM so that he could send help (i.e. two of his employees) to me to get the boxes into the house.

We had to rent a special nail gun to install the floors, as the material is an engineered bamboo product, and it is so hard that traditional hardwood nail guns won't work properly. The rental gun jammed approximately 800 times during the process, and CPM said a lot of bad words while unjamming the gun, but in the end, we got it done. I love the floor. CPM plans to form a break dance fight club. (First rule of break dance fight club: no talking about break dance fight club.) I wish I had gotten video of his back spins.

Currently, our mechanic is installing tile in the bathrooms. Yes, people, it is possible that I will have a flushing toilet early next week! I may not have doors, but, by god, I can pee inside! You don't realize what an advantage a guy has until you've had to pee in a port a potty when it's 19 degrees outside.