I'm Floored

Kevin and Joe got a great start on the hardwood flooring in the kitchen area on Monday before I left town, and when I returned Thursday night, all of the hardwood floors had been installed where they belong (with the exception of the anteroom, where they've still got old plumbing in the way). So...that means the kitchen, back hallway, laundry room, anteroom, butler's pantry, powder room, master bath closet, and the landing of the main upstairs bathroom now have beautiful amber oak true 3/4" prefinished hardwoods down. And it's pretty beautiful. Or beautifully pretty.





Getting Very Tiled, Too
I can't decide if Pete's been dreading tackling the tile, but he got underway on that this Friday morning, with the main bathroom upstairs as the starting point. This is the bathroom that one enters from the landing on the stairs, so its entry is not level with the rest of the upstairs rooms. My architect Sam Binkley designed in a few stairs to help get the main part of it up high enough to still allow for the 10-ft ceilings in the areas underneath it. While I was away, the crew put hardwood flooring in that small entryway from the stair landing, and they also got in the treadboards and trimmed around this small stairwell. While Pete had told me he hoped to get the Master Bathroom finished early, so we could demolish the old one and get that problematic plumbing out of the way in the anteroom, it seems this new upstairs bathroom may have to come online first. That means I've got to get with my kitchen designer, Tim Stevenson, of Kitchen Vision here in town...we need to figure out the vanities for all the bathrooms. By the time Pete and Robert left mid-afternoon today, this bathroom's floor was almost completely tiled, except for a few tight or intricate spots. I'll add that I'm hopeful that the pace will be picking up again; it seems we've been in a three-week slowdown on the project.