Author: Kari

The Main Floor fir & larch is all in, the three rooms are all cleaned, and all done just in time for Christmas!!

The Guest Bedroom…

Here’s a panorama of the Guest Bedroom… quite distorted, but it gives a bit of idea of the entire room…

Our Bedroom…

This panorama worked out better…

The Office…

This first photo also shows one of the new shelves Brian made, above the antique doors to the Office. It’s also from our Blue Pine Slab. This one has the live edge. More photos of our new shelves to come!

Looking back out to the Living Room…

Sometime in the first half of 2020, when we have a stretch of good weather … we do all of the sawing outside … we’ll tackle the Loft.

While we were working on the flooring, Brian created new shelves for us. He used a big blue pine slab, and cut it into several shelves. (We were going to use this slab for a sliding door, but shelves were calling to us instead!! 😃 )

One of the shelves went into the Guest Bedroom Closet.

Brian cut it to size, and sanded it and sanded it and sanded it some more! He attached the shelf to the wall using black painted piping and flanges…

And, why would we put a shelf in the closet? Well, the closet isn’t used for clothes, so we decided to display my Gram’s quilts!

My Gram made six of these quilts (and the matching pillow up on the shelf); one quilt was made by my Nana (my great-grandmother)…

Brian made a “Quilt Ladder”… he used an old pulley (about 12” in diameter) and some old rope, and he made the rungs from cedar “hobby wood” we had…

I LOVE how it turned out!! Brian did an AMAZING job!!

As for the other shelves from our Blue Pine Slab? … You’ll have to wait and see… I’m sure they’ll turn up in another Post soon!!

Before November ended, the Office got the final F&L Treatment (Fir and Larch Flooring, that is) for 2019! We filled up the Living Room, Dining Room and Guest Bedroom with all of the Office furniture… and the fish tank moved too!!

Out came the carpet and the underlay…

The Office was an outdoor deck in its previous life, and when it was first enclosed a few small gaps to the outside world were left; so we filled ’em up with spray foam insulation!

One thing we did differently in the Office was we put down some rubber-backed underlay/vapor barrier. We had some left from when the hickory floor went in and thought it would be best used in the Office. Then in went the fir & larch!

Then… belt sand, stain, palm sand, epoxy. We improved our technique with the epoxy and only needed a wee bit of palm sanding once the epoxy dried.

We topped ‘er all off with three coats of polyurethane. While it was curing we washed the walls, the windows and dusted everything.

Stay tuned for the grand finale!! You won’t have to wait long!!

Our Bedroom was the next to get its new floor! All the furniture was moved out. And that carpet and underlay is gonzo!

And where did we sleep, you ask?? Well…..

Into the Living Room we went!! 😃 It totally weirded out the dogs!! 😂 To say nothing of weirding out us!! 🤣

All the wood in… same pattern as in the Guest Bedroom (8″, 6″, 4″, 8″, 6″, 4″, … ). In the Guest Bedroom, Brian used the palm sander prior to staining. In Our Bedroom, he used the belt sander prior to staining.

In the Guest Bedroom, we used “stainable” wood filler in the cracks and knot holes, then stained the wood. We weren’t thrilled with the results, so this time we tried epoxy after staining.

The epoxy has tiny bubbles, but a blast from the torch removes them!

After staining and epoxying, Brian sanded with the palm sander. Giving the wood a second sanding made a difference in how smooth the floor is, but didn’t take away any character!

And the epoxy??? Well, that created more work for us. We heated, scraped and re-sanded to get the excess off. But the result turned out better than using the wood filler!!

Then, three coats of polyurethane; while it was curing we washed and Liquid-Gold’ed the walls and dusted/washed everything down.

Here’s another attempt at a panorama of the room:

Stay tuned for the final result!!

And, on to the Office we go!!

We started laying our Circle-Sawn, Fir & Larch hardwood floor in the Guest Bedroom!

We moved out the furniture, Brian’s taking out the door, only the carpet left to go!

Carpet and underlay are gone, gone, gone. And so are all the carpet nail strips and staples! I tried a “panorama” shot — it gives an odd, contorted look to the room:

Hardwood going in! Brian is having a chat and, look close, a nip of Redtail Rise Mead, while chatting with Bailey!!

Tis all in!

Here’s a close-up of the wood: 8″, 6″, 4″, 8″, 6″, 4″… With some beautiful knots!!

Sanding and staining!

All stained! It’s a bit darker than we anticipated, but this stain really shows the character of the wood!!

Then three coats of a polyurethane top coat!

Here’s a close-up:

Here, walls are washed and “Liquid Gold’ed”, and the floor is curing for a week.

The F&L turned out absolutely gorgeous!!!! We couldn’t be more pleased with the end result!!

The furniture is slowing making it’s way back in to the room. Stay tuned for photos of the final result!!! In the meantime… on to our bedroom!