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...