Transitions and Cool Saws

Since I am wrapping up the flooring process for the bedrooms I thought I'd bore the reader with a few more pics on the subject. Here's the hallway with the transitions installed to the bath (left) and great room (straight ahead). They really make the floor look and feel complete.

It is said that he who dies with the most toys, wins. If that is true then I am a true contender. Inherited from my father, no doubt. Well, in order to install trim you must have a saw that can cut straight and cut specific angles as well, and I am not going to suffer a hand saw for this type of work. Enter the power miter saw hunt. I perused the local big box stores as well as the Harbor Freight and came up with a beauty of a saw for only $110. Take note, you married women out there! Any man worth his salt would fawn over this tool if he received it for a gift. And it even has a laser! Super cool. Light weight and small, it is a great tool for cutting boards 8 inches in width and under. With a 7-1/4 inch saw blade it is small, but I liked it even more after using it.

That puppy will have a revered spot in the man cave for sure.

I'm going to close this chapter with a view from the guest room window again. Old Tom beckons, "Come visit the Streagle House in Idaho, where the snow is omnipresent and the air is dry and cool!" And visit you must, especially if you value the uncomplicated life of the west. And there are lots of cows and pheasant to watch as well. Perhaps the most interesting thing to experience is the sound of the coyotes, singing to each other as the sun sets. It happens every night. Come and hear it for yourself. We won't have the lights on for you, but the starlight will be enough to see the way.

I Have Met My Enemy...

And it is 3:30 AM. That's when I have to rise out of slumber and penetrate the Idaho darkness in my 1991 Miata junker and roll down the interstate to work at Home Depot. My new job there as an inventory drone is both a curse and a boon. I hate the early report time but love getting off the clock at 9-10 AM! Anyway, this has caused me to neglect the blog for a couple of weeks, so here is a much needed update to fill in everyone (a subscriber list of at least my sister and one or two others).

The roof was finished for the winter. Karren and I got the shingles done and I completed the exterior painting to the point where we are ready to do a major renovation/reconstruction of the mud room roof, which is an entirely separate structure from the house. It does share an outside house wall and this is where it is pulling away due to concrete settling. We will address this in the spring since snow has already begun to frequent our locale.

The emphasis now is interior work. The upstairs bedrooms were in a state of complete chaos last report, but that has come along nicely. We were able to finish the painting of the master BR and install the laminate floor. Here is Karren using a stud finder to locate where to nail the floor trim moldings. We opted for the most economical floor mold but I did insist on having a shoe mold with it. I primed them in the garage before we started to get the paint on without having to lay on the floor painting.

The process of laying laminate flooring is easy, but takes a bit of time and space. The tools needed are few: hammer or mallet, hammer block, puller bar, jigsaw w/ fine bi-directional wood blade, pencil and measuring tape. I use a speed square to mark my cuts. THe only cuts needed are at doorways, closets and the end of runs. Each cut-off from the end of a run can be used to begin the next. We had 400 square feet of floor to lay and were eager to get started. The house we lived in in Maidens had laminate that we installed and we really like this style of floor. It's not for everyone but it works for us. Cheap too. Here's a picture of the guest bedroom in process - Remember the urine stains?! Neutralized and covered up with a laminate underlayment pad and vapor barrier. No more smell!

That becomes this:

Here is the master bedroom. We actually moved upstairs and are living above ground now! The relief is palpable. Note the continued mess of living without any dressers yet.

The guest room is now almost done. I have to install window blinds and finish a bit of shoe molding today, but the majority of the work is done. I found that something has happened to our electrical circuit in the wall outlets, but I will be replacing all of them too, and hope the problem will be self evident.

One more pic of the guest room and a second one that shows the view of Old Tom out the window. Note the snow on this 9000 ft. peak.

Continued on next post...

Cameo by the Author and Ramblings

You know what? There are few pics of me on this epic tome. So I had Karren snap one while I was slappin' paint on the wall. We are working hard to finish the master bedroom so that we can move up from the basement. I'm tired of living like I'm in a fallout shelter! I like to paint everything white, cause it keeps the blues away...

As we were taking down the various blinds and moving baseboard heaters there are the obligatory sheetrock patches that have to be done. It's a good thing I am -

"DRYWALL MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE!!!"

A wee bit o' mud and it will disappear:

Sheetrock is my friend. Cedar shakes are mine enemy.

Speaking of shingles, the shingling of the roof is virtually completed. We can now weather the weather, whether it snows or whether it rains. I hereby vow that I will never shingle another dwelling in my life! You get the idea. Karren and I will install the last ridge vent and cap shingle section on Saturday, weather permitting. The remaining items to address on the roof include, 1) installing another brace kit for the chimney (hey, I want it to stand up to a tornado), 2) Painting the small vertical wall section on either side of the great room, and 3) completing the caulking of the high windows. Of course our mud room off the kitchen is still left to work on because it is a project in itself, as it is pulling away from the rest of the house because of concrete settling problems. That job will have to wait for another time when I really want to torture myself. This place ought to be called Club Gitmo.

On a rather sad note, I started work this week at Home Depot. I am working the 5AM-10AM part time shift as a shelf replenishing technician. They have some other name for it but that is essentially the task I will throw myself into at 0 dark thirty. At least I will have my weekends free. Kinda sad that the days of the "kept man" are over. And I thought this woman I followed to Idaho would bathe me in luxury, satisfying my every whim as I mused about life sitting on my a**. Oh well, life's a beach! Looking forward to meeting some of the older folks that work there; so far all my trainers and mentors have been about six or seven years old.

I have no more pics for the blog as of yet, so I'll be shooting some when we finally get the crap off of the roof and the yard cleaned up. The bedroom flooring will be on the schedule for next week as well. Looking for excitement? Come on out to Idaho where the work never seems to end and the end is nowhere in sight. Where's that big bowl of Halloween candy?.....