Moving Time

Office is finally finished. Now, to move our office out of the kitchen and storage and into its home. I am going to miss the desk being in the kitchen, because it was easy. But, I can't wait to get back into a real office and not be reminded of work that needs to be done on the way to bed.

 First piece of furniture moves into the office. This will be the printer stand. I looked and looked until I found this piece. It came from a Elder Care facility in town. They updated their furniture and didn't want this. I had to do just a little bit of refinishing. It is a super cool piece for our new office.

 These are two of the storing areas for all of our stuff. Hopefully, we can get a whole bunch to fit in the office. It won't be the final resting place for most of the furniture but it will be in conditioned air and out of dust so everything should have a better life.






















Tiffany was here and provided some muscle power. Her extra height makes it easier to move things with Bill. Their arms are at the same level; not where he has to move things low because that is where my arms are.

This will be my desk. It came from the rock yard. Bill's desk matches this one. The entire room color palette came from this furniture. You work with what you have. Made a beautiful room!

Unusual reproduction piece that may or may not stay in the office. It has all kinds of secret drawers and hidden compartments. For now, this is where I will keep the cash receipt book and such for when renters come out to the office and pay in cash.

Of course, Wyatt found a way to help. He immediately started cleaning what we brought in.

 Bill's hunting cabinet went into the office closet.

 Rest time. These are really cool chairs I found at Mom and Dad's. Again a little bit of the farm coming into our house.

 Another chair from Mom and Dad. Bill and Brynnlee found it a great place to sit. This one will definitely end up in the Trophy Room but will reside in the Office for now.

Bill, her Pa, is Brynnlee's favorite. Neena is good because I feed her; but she thinks  Pa does all the fun stuff.

Read to the Last Sentence

While waiting for his Dad to fill the lawn cart with dirt from the footing trench Wyatt would come in and take over my job of painting. He didn't know he would be painting so he had to go to the Grandkid dresser drawers and find a junk shirt to put on.

 Sutton showed up just in time to help pull the tape off the wall. He had to hit the same drawer because their dog, Ollie, got carsick all over his clothes on the way out. Pulling the tape off is a very satisfying job.

And it means that we are finished!

Getting Close

Time to get the baseboards installed. Just laying the baseboard against the wall makes a big difference.

 Now a little casing around the door. At this point every job is a big job. The end is getting closer and closer.

 Tape off the floor and put the second coat of paint on the base and case.

 After painting the trim wood; it's time to move the tape from the floor to the top of the wood. Once that is done we silicone any gaps between the wood and the wall. Then we paint the silicone and we will end up with a wonderful clean crisp line.

Father Son Duo

We are expecting the rock mason to show up and start work any day. We  have one project that needs to be done before  he gets here. We need to pour the footing for the rock under the South Beach hallway window. To do this we need to dig out the dirt first.

Darrick to the rescue. He came over to do all the hard work of digging the trench that will be filled with rebar and concrete.

 Wyatt tagged along; and that kid is one hard working young man. Of course he named himself the designated driver. He drove the 4 Wheeler with the lawn cart full of dirt down the drive to the street where we are still working on the new culvert.

 Then he finished the trench by cleaning out the loose dirt that had been left behind.

Darrick is teaching his children the value of being a hard worker by example.

Busy Busy Day

Love busy days. We are putting up base and case and filling in nail holes and siliconing. Should be painting the trim's second coat this afternoon. Granite guy is coming out to measure for the window sills in the West Wing and Garage. Waiting for mason sand, portland cement, masonry cement, mortar coloring to be delivered. Rock mason should start in the next couple of days. Oh, and we need to dig the trench to pour concrete in for the footing for the rock on the South Beach hallway rock. Whew!!! Love it!!!! Progress!!!!

Three Days and Counting

Office floor is done and now we play the waiting game. We love the floor!

We need to wait three days before we can put our furniture in. That insures the Polyurethane is completely cured. This won't be idle time, now we can put the base and case in and do our touch up paint. We can walk on it just nothing heavy. This is a  huge step forward for us.

We will be putting all kinds of stuff in here to get it out of the way of the building process. That means the office will be very crowded but will make our life easier in the long run.

Nine O'Clock Job Done

Nine O'clock coat of Urethane is down and drying.

It is put down with a lambskin applicator.

Tools set up and ready to go. Bucket of Urethane, roller tray, and plastic cup to add product to the tray.

South side of Office partially done.

 30 minutes later all the floor is done and drying. Very exciting, this is a huge step forward on getting the room done so we can move in and work out of there.

Knock Knock Who's There

Darrick found the great door we are using for the office door. It is going to look incredible when the Trophy Room is finished. You get to the Office through the Trophy Room. There were just two issues. There was a peephole and we didn't want one and there was the hole for a deadbolt and we won't have one.


On our trip to North Carolina this fall we were wandering the streets of a quaint little town before dinner one evening and wandered into an antique store. Lo, and behold Bill found the answer to the peephole problem. He thought his treasure was cool and then when I suggested to use it on the door he became very excited. He had found a pistol door knocker. They said it was an antique. I don't know about that it was pretty shiny.

Took care of the shiny proplem with vinegar and water. That ate away the shiny coating and exposed the brass. Then I soaked it in a salt water solution and that started the antiquing process.

 After those two steps then I rubbed a brown stain onto it. Then cleaned the stain off everything except the grooves.

 Super cool door knocker for a door in a Trophy Room. When we bring souvenirs back from trips they aren't the usual collectible spoons.

The dead bolt problem was taken care of with a Bronzed plate. The door looks pretty good. The door will be stained once Bill has chosen what stain he wants to use in his Trophy Room.

Terminator

The Terminator was just at our house! Wouldn't have minded if Arnold had come to visit but this terminator was Tanner. Bill had run all the CAT-5 wiring in the office. This is for phones, computers, and the printer. We had wire sticking out of the walls and needed the plugs. Between  Bill and I; we can do a lot of things but this is a job we do not do. Couldn't find anyone that does this job. Finally got smart and figured out what they are called so I was able to google and find someone. I know this is a very special job but this company wanted $150 an hour. We will pay what ever it takes but this seemed a little high to us. There are 15 wires that need to be terminated. We are having this person get what needs to be done in the future Media center in the kitchen and verify that everything is connected the right way in the mechanical room also. They figured it would take 2-3 hours.

$150 an hour! Oh, wait did I ever ask our IT guy if he knows someone? Went through my emails to Shannon and saw that I had never asked him for a referral. That wasn't very smart was it? When you have someone in the know ask them first. Sure enough he knows someone who does this as a side job. They work together in the IT department at the Capital. Called Tanner and he is $50 an hour. Pretty good money as an extra job and worth every penny.

 Now we have pretty plugs waiting for the office to be finished.

 This was a surprise, we weren't expecting something this size. We were thinking house not office. Wired and ready to work. Just need to get everything else done.

Speedy Gonzales

Bill said the grout lines would take me 6 hours. I was involved with this project for 7 hours.

My seven hours included:

Painting each grout line twice, going to town and having lunch with Mom and Dad, going to Lowe's,  vacuuming the floor three times. and painting the blue that still showed with a matching paint and then rubbing it off so it just stayed in the wood and you didn't see a line of paint. Not bad for a 7 hour project.

 Looks pretty good.

 Grout lines dry fairly dark and the Urethane will darken them even more. One nice thing is that grout lines don't have to be absolutely perfect. So if mine are a little off. no one will notice.

This is where I painted the blue that should be under a baseboard but this is an ounce of prevention in case it peeks out a little.

I vacuumed three times because anything left on the floor at this point will be there forever.I vacuumed up and down. side to side, and then corner to corner. Tonight at 9:00 we are putting the first coat of Urethane down. We will be putting it down every 12 hours for the next couple of days. If you just wait 12 hours between coats you don't need to sand. If you wait longer between coats you need to sand between coats. We will be putting 3-5 coats down.

Picky Picky People

We love the way the floor in the office looks. It is beautiful; unless you look at the seams. We watched videos and read blogs on how to do the OSB flooring. Everyone said just sand and then fill in the seams with the saw dust. That's what we did. You could still see the blue along all the edges of the boards. We are not happy with that. I contacted the people we had watched and read and some of them responded. 1) Oh, we are just living with it; after a while you don't notice it anymore, 2) We put area rugs down and you don't see the edges, 3) We didn't have any paint on the edges, and 4) that's why we stained our floor so you wouldn't see the blue. Why did no one say these things in their 15 minutes of internet fame?

This is a totally unacceptable look in our house. How could anyone be happy with that. We also figured out that everyone else had left 1/4 inch gaps between their boards that they never talked about in their information. Two of the people had no idea how we got our boards flush against each other. We don't understand how you couldn't get them flush.

 So, off to the drawing board to decide what to do. We could cover the floor with another covering but we really like the wood.  We could stain but we love the natural wood color. The plan was to have a solid wood floor with no seams, can't do that so we decide to router in grout lines. We chalked a straight line and the used a board held in place with rock to keep our lines straight.

 The OSB sheets are 4x8 and we didn't like that look of just doing the seams; so we routered some more and made what look like 4x4 tiles of cork.

 Looks okay, not what we thought we would end up with, but that's okay it will still be unique and really pretty. You gotta go with the flow. I tend to obsess over things and Bill has to speak sternly to me that it will be just fine when it is finished.

 After routering and vacuuming  again; it was time to add the look of a grout line. I am painting each of the lines with a brown. It is the color of the Trophy Room walls; so there will be a visual going from one room to the next.  Grout lines look very nice.

 This is the size of brush I am using. Bill has done the math and it will take me about 6 hours to do the whole floor.

So, if you need me tomorrow, I will not be available.

More Family Stuff

I love all the things, from my family farm and the house where I grew up, in the building of our house.  The latest is the shelving in the office.

Daddy had this beautiful wood in his workshop. He says he bought it to put shelves up somewhere at sometime.He doesn't remember where or when. No matter, now we are using it for that purpose.

Cold Weather Project

Too cold to work on the siding so what can we do inside?It's a good day to work on the office flooring.

Today we rented a floor sander to sand the OSB boards we have put on the floor. The one we got was an orbital sander. Wrong kind for this job. The first problem was the sandpaper. Bill put a piece on and within 5 seconds it was ripped and flying off the machine. He put the second one on, must not have done something right. That one lasted maybe 15 seconds. Called the rental place and they told us that you have to pull the paper backing off to expose the adhesive side for it to stay in place. There is no backing, there is no adhesive side. Oh, we must have sold you the kind without the adhesive that holds it onto the machine. No problem just put 5 sheets on at a time and it will work. Okay, glad Bill bought lots! Sandpaper stays on but Bill cannot control the machine. He is a big strong  guy and he had no control on where that baby was going. Called the rental place back; when Bill rented it he told them what we were going to be doing with it. Oh, OSB boards have too much glue in them you can't use an orbital sander and no we don't have drum sanders.

This is the orbital sander we could not use.

Off to town to rent a drum sander. These are the lines and markings we need to sand out of the OSB boards. Also the sanding will give a nice smooth level surface for us to seal.

 You can find the funniest things in the funniest places. It looks like a bolt and washer were somehow pressed into the OSB board when the boards were made. Nothing there now except the shapes.

 First strips of sanding. The entire floor will get a sand. We will use the drum sander for all of it except the edges and corners and I will use a belt sander to get in close.








 After the sanding was done we have this much sawdust from the floor. We will use a bit of it to fill the spaces between the boards to make them disappear. 

 The floor is beautiful. Once it is sealed it will look like cork flooring. Love the different textures and colors.

Next Big Project

It has been very cold so far this winter. This morning it was 3 degrees windchill. Too cold to work on siding so onto our next indoor project. Time to put the floor down in the office.

First thing this morning while Bill was mentally lining up our how to list I washed the floor with a Muriatic Acid solution. This really cleaned the floor and slightly etched the concrete for the adhesive to adhere better. The Previous Owner appears to have putting some type of finish over top the concrete so we need to do this step.

 Put a fan in to dry the floor as quickly as possible.

Adhesive was brought in to warm up. We have had the OSB panels in the office for a couple of weeks now. They need to be acclimatized to the room and we wanted to be sure they laid flat.

 Put down chalk lines to confirm which direction we want the panels to go and to see how square the room is.















Laid the OSB boards down to check to see how square they are to the chalk lines. So far so good. It looks as if it will be as easy as the DIY blogs we have read on this kind of flooring. You can tell the top left panel was the one on top of the stack of boards. It is impregnated with drywall dust. We will move it to the back corner in case after sanding it still has a white glow to it.

There will only be two tricky cuts. The rest of the cuts are just straight. The panels need to slip around both ends of the middle wall. After the mitered corners of the crown moulding these should be easy peasy for Bill to do.

Sure enough the cut is perfect. We put the cut side in first ans then lowered the full side. Got it down for making sure the cut was right, pulled back up for adhesive to go down, and then put back down without hitting the walls even once. We make a pretty good team.








Time for the adhesive to go down. As Bill would spread it I would glop the next amount of glue onto the floor. Uh, Bill at this rate this big bucket of glue will only last us through two panels. The directions say it should cover the entire floor.

 Switched to a smaller toothed trowel and now it will go as far as expected. Bill could be a modern art artist with his swirl patterns.

Really thought our days of schlepping rock by hand were over. But, we decided to put weight along the joints to be sure everything dries flat. This is overkill; none of the blogs we read said to do anything like this but we wanted to be overly cautious. We only laid one half the room this morning. We need to go help our Grandbaby, William, due in a few months. He needs Neena and Pa to help put a mural up in his bedroom. We will go back to this tomorrow, he is much more important than this floor.