Construction Update-We Have a Floor

 Construction continues with progress being made. However, most of it is still prep work for when the "real" stuff gets in, like cabinets and appliances. But we do have the new floor done, except for the threshold transitions. The floor took about a week with some additional inconveniences involved. First was, the washer and dryer were unhooked and in the garage. The next was that we couldn't walk on the floors during various parts of the process. That meant we had to go outside and around the house to enter the basement where our food and temporary kitchen are. While both of these were annoying, they were not really a problem. As I have said, I am lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have these kinds of issues.

Here are a few pictures of the floor being done. (Realize that these captions are from someone who doesn't really know how to install floors. I'm just describing what I saw.)

You can see the beginning steps of the prep here. First, they wetted the floor with water. Next, they spread mortar (thinset) on the floor. On top of that, they added an underlayment layer (Schluter Ditra) and pressed it down with the roller you see under the window. It took about two days to do the entire area with additional drying time (i.e., a time we couldn't walk on it.)

After the underlayment was securely dried in place, they added another layer of mortar to the top of it. This required another day of drying time.

Then they started laying the tile on top of another layer of thinset.

They had a complicated system of gadgets to space and level the tile that I didn't quite understand. I don't know if there is a difference in function between the red and blue pieces. It took about 2 days to lay the tile and another day or so to grout it.

The workman had the completed floor covered up with paper for protection before I got a picture of the finished job.

They have also been doing finish carpentry work in the pantry on the shelves. The picture makes the pantry look bigger than it is, but it is bigger than what we had before.

They were also doing finish work around the opening into the kitchen.
You can see the washer in the background. It's disconnected again
in anticipation of working on the floor molding in the laundry room.

This is an air filter that Ward built from 4 Hepa filters and a box fan. It works as well as or better than the commercial one we bought and costs about 1/2 as much. However, the commercial one is sleeker and takes up less space. Also, in this picture, you can see the displaced cleaning supplies which now live on the hearth.

Now for the disappointing news. The cabinets that were supposed to be done by the end of February are now slated for delivery at the end of April, which puts the completion time for the project at the end of May. But it is what it is. We're too far into the project to turn back now. So patience is the name of the game at this point.

Until next time...