Finishing projects

On Monday with the help of my MIL I finished the floor! What an interesting project. At least I learned some things ... how to better do things ... how to NOT do things, LOL! It went pretty well considering I have never done any home improvements prior to this room and certainly have never installed a floor.



This room was the bane of my existence for the past two months. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse I would find another problem that would need fixing.

Here's what it looked like when we bought the house.



I started by sanding the walls to make them flat and uniform. There were thick layers of drippy, bumpy paint and joint compound/plaster all over them. The molding was half painted too. The drywall tape on the ceiling was bubbling and peeling off.




Once all the sanding and patching was done (3-4 weeks later ... maybe even more) I did 2-3 coats of primer, including ceiling and doors. I bought trim for the doors and found that the old trim around the closet was much wider and now I had to use joint compound to flatten out the 1" area surrounding the entire door to make it flush with the wall so that the new trim would sit right and look good.

Then I was finally able to paint color on the walls. I did at least 2 coats of paint, may have even been three by the time I was done, LOL! I was using a flat base, so I really had to make sure all the walls were flat and not bumpy or pitted.



Now that this room is almost complete I can finally get back to my knitting projects! I have the second sleeve left of my cardigan and one sock for the pair I was making for a co-worker - it was so hot I couldn't knit with wool for a couple of weeks it was sticking to my fingers. I am going to make a pair of socks for the Sock Knitters Anonymous group on Ravelry and start my bat shawl that I want complete for Halloween.

Getting the floor done

Saturday was spent cleaning up the floor to prepare for putting down the tongue and groove laminate. There was this old carpet pad underneath the carpet in this room that had literally disintigrated into dust! It was so nasty to clean up. The rest of the day was spent finishing a sleeve on my sweater and watching season 1 of Dr. Who.



Sunday I was able to start actually laying the floor down. I started by quickly placing the boards generally where they would go and as I went I made any measurements and cuts that I had to.



Then I started putting it together, the beginning went very rough. They kept coming apart at the other end from where I was banging them in, it was a real pain. Once I got about 1/4 done, it started to go smoother, but still annoying. I was determined to get at least 1/2 done before stopping for the day.

Hot, hot, hot!

Its incredibly hot here in New England, considering it didn't even feel like summer until very recently and then it was 95 degrees all of a sudden ... don't like that, at least give us something to get used to!

I haven't posted in a month, so lets see if I can recall what's been going on!

I finished painting my craft room the other weekend. Last Friday I went to Home Depot and got the baseboards and trim paint. Now I have to rip up the carpet and scrape the foam off the floor, its this black foam that is glued to the floor and disintigrating, so it should be an interesting job! Then I can install the floor and door molding and baseboards.

We got a pond for the yard. Its about 3-4 feet across. The frogs love it ... and sometimes birds like to eat the frogs, yuck! The squirell also thinks its his personal drinking fountain.




We occasionally see deer in the yard, but the other day one came really close to the house. Unfortunately the screen in the window interfered with the photo. Would've been a really nice one!



I am on the first sleeve of my cardigan. I got the back, and two fronts done so far. Its coming out nicely, really quick too for a sweater. Will post photos once its done. This was the back up to the lace, then its stockinette from there.