Aside from a few necessary projects here and there, we've decided to focus on one room at a time. It's a way to get quicker gratification which is motivation for us to keep going. Within a couple of weeks of moving into our very much unfinished cottage, we started to feel pretty overwhelmed at all of the work left to do. Because we need showers and other fully functional bathroom plumbing more than we need to eat, we decided to try to finish the bathroom before any of the other rooms including the kitchen. We've done a few things along the way, all over the house, like a kitchen sink and dishwasher, but our main focus is going to be the bathroom. Now that I've announced that to the world, the bathroom is most likely fixing to come to a screeching halt. That seems to be how it usually goes. Murphy's law.
Jeff finished the shower surround last weekend and then, within just a couple of hours, he laid the pine wood floor too! We decided to go with pine for a few reasons. All of them good.
First thing we did was get down a half a dozen 1"x12"x14' boards from our stash upstairs and take them outside where Jeff began bossing me around yelling things like, "You grab that end of the stack and lets carry them waaaaayyyy, way, over to the barn!" Then he snorted, "What do you mean they're too heavy?!" Followed by, "One at a time?!" Then he hefted them down the hill all by himself while I followed him to the barn and gently reminded him that he married a woman, not a man, and he might as well have asked me to hold a car up while he changed a tire real quick and that he was eventually going to be the death of me and that sometimes I wonder if he wished I were a man so he could yell out crazy demands at me that wouldn't sometimes make me cry like, "I need the wrench, those are curved-jaw pliers" because how would he feel if I asked him to pass me my egg beaters and he handed me a whisk. I wouldn't say anything to him, I'd just improvise, make do and just appreciate that he was helping me. Then I told him that I was going to tell everyone in blogland how mean and bossy he could be and then everyone would find out what he was really like. Then I asked him nicely to hold still while I took his picture.
He's so sweet.
As I mentioned earlier, these boards are 1x12's but actually they're more like less than 1 by11 1/4's. We wanted various widths of boards so we cut about two thirds of the boards into roughly 7" and 4" wide strips and the other third of the boards, we cut down the middle to make them roughly 5 1/2" wide.
Then Jeff cut out the knot holes and any knots that looked like they would be a problem for us down the road. This also gave us varied lengths to work with which adds to the look and texture of the finished floor.
Normally he would have used the chop saw for this, but it was extremely cold outside and Jeff has a very steady hand so they all turned out straight anyway.
Once he got them cut, he began laying them down and nailing them in. Precisely cut lengths were not necessary on all of the boards because most of them end under the tub and will eventually be covered.
We have radiant floor heat so he had to choose a nail length that wouldn't go through the subfloor and pierce any of the water filled pex tubing. I'll have to do a post about our radiant floor heating system sometime. I know that sounds boring but I'm sure there are a few people who might be curious about it and it is WONDERFUL!
Now it's ready for stain.
We chose Minwax Early American. It's brown. Not reddish or yellowish brown, just brown.
Then a day later we sealed it. Because pine is so soft we went with a low gloss, penetrating sealer.
And here it is. It's a bad picture but all my pictures are bad, I assume you're used to it by now.
The room still has a ways to go, but we took some big leaps towards the finish line last weekend.
