Adventures in Renovation

What a huge pain in the ass. I spent 12 hours last Sunday trying to put up some baseboard before the floors guys came the next day and it felt like I barely got anything done. I wanted to at least get the electrical behind the baseboards around the outside brick wall because then it would be all ready for my electrician to come in and finish up. But man, what a pain it was.

When I first started demolition on this house I found these blocks of wood embedded between the brick that confused me. Initially I though they were structural but then Greg told me they were there so you have something to nail your baseboards to. How convenient! So I spent a lot of time knocking out plaster along the walls trying to find these hidden wood blocks. But nailing into them wasn't as easy as it seemed. I couldn't use Bryan's finish nailer because those nails were too short. And when I manually pounded in some 8d finish nails, the board would move around and wouldn't really set very firmly. Somehow those blocks of wood were shifting in the wall.

A lot of the old baseboards I pulled off, were nailed partially into the floor. But I couldn't' do that because I'd run the risk of nailing into the wiring running behind. So I tried a bunch of things. I tried framing nails but they were messy and not any more effective. I tried screws but they left a big hole in the trim and those would totally mess with the next person who tried to take them off. I can see it now. "What the hell? Who the @#$%! screwed the baseboards to the wall?!" I even tried nailing the baseboard straight into the brick with fluted masonry nails. I was crazy and desperate at this point because I had gotten down to pieces where there weren't any wood blocks in the wall to attach to at all.

Finally Bryan suggested the winning strategy: attached new pieces of wood to the brick for the baseboard to attach. After I chiseled holes in the plaster, I cut squares of 3/8" OSB plywood and hammered them into the brick with the fluted nails. Then I had a much stabler surface that was close enough I could use the finish nailer to aattach the baseboard. It was time consuming, but effective.

The good news is that the baseboard looks great. I wasn't sure about the style and went around in circles trying to decide on this trim, but I ended up going with what approximated my old trim. The finishing touches really bring it together. Next time tho, I'm going to use some Tapcon screws because the fluted nails had a tendency to break the brick out pop out because of all the beating it took to drive them in.

Posted by at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I can't believe this story is already a week old, but here goes anyway. After the floor guys came and left because they were "unequipped" to fix my floors, I had to fix them myself. It wasn't as hard as I had imagined. It didn't involve the usual multiple trips to the hardware or switching to back-up plans or anything like some previous projects. Like say the bathroom tile incident. Pretty much, after the bathroom tile problems, I didn't want to go near these patches. It was worth it to pay someone to do it for me for $50. Oh well.

One reason I was hesitant was because I never really found any good instruction on how to do it. Greg told me about cutting off part of the groove and what not, but it still didn't click. This cheesy website told me to use a chisel primarily to make cuts at the end of the board and then split the middle with a chisel. I didn't realize that these instructions were for wood plank placed over a subfloor. Otherwise they usually tell you to drill holes where you want to make cuts like an inch away from a joist, and then connect the holes with a jigsaw cut perpendicular or a circular saw down the length of the board (like these instructions). Then you nail a 2x4 to the old joist so you have something for the new floor board to sit on.

I ended up doing the whole thing with a chisel and a circular saw. And it was damn loud. First there was constant pounding in a big empty, echoy room. Then after I fired up the circular saw I would go deaf for brief period. All this noise led to one of my neighbors to leave a note in my door about neighborhood courtesy. That was the first time I had heard any complaints, but this was definitely some of the loudest most annoying work I've done so far. Especially since all of it was after I got off work at night.

Everything worked out okay in the end. The flooring I bought at salvage was just barely thinner than my old flooring but the gaps aren't all that noticeable. I had to sand a bunch of paint off them with my belt sander too but other than that, well worth the $14 bucks they cost me. I didn't end up splitting any of the wrong boards like I was worried about and I didn't run out of flooring at the last minute. The verdict: Definitely pretty much good enough.

Posted by at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are some photos of my floors refinished. I posted some before and after photos on flickr so you can get the full effect. It reeks of polyurethane. You can smell it before you even walk through the front door. I told Vicki it smells like victory.

They look absolutely beautiful. I love the color. It came out a real aged amber color. I've never live in a place with wood floors like this before. I took my shoes off and skated around on them the next day. The floor is still pretty rough with lots of nail holes and gaps in the wood, but that's the kind of character you can't buy with Pergo laminate flooring. Man, I hate Pergo.

Posted by at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)