Week 21: Nov 16 - 20

Tom and I were able to finish the wood flooring in the entry way and kitchen. I don't think that it looks too bad for a couple of novice flooring guys. Working around corners and changing directions with the plank placement were the two most technically challenging parts of the job. Physically, the repetitive stooping, squatting, kneeling has kept the both of us sore all week.



Now attention moves to the bonus room where we are going to put down a laminate flooring. We chose this over carpet because Viki wants to do quilting in this room and she did not want to loose needles in the carpeting. Also, we want the area to be the place where the kids do all of their creative / messy projects. I wanted to avoid staining carpet with their crafts. We also looked at Vinyl flooring, which would have worked well except that the cost to prepare the subfloor and pay for someone to install the flooring made it more expensive than the laminate. Here comes some more stooping, squatting, and kneeling. All of this activity with the house is turning in to pretty good rehab for my knee. The harder I work the better it seems to feel.

I have started with preparing the floor by removing any debris, scraping down sheetrock mud splatter, and pounding down any elevated nails to achieve as flat a surface as possible. A thin foam pad is then laid down on top of which the laminate flooring will be placed. Laminate flooring is a "floating" floor meaning it does not get anchored down to the subfloor.

Kevin Layton and I were also able to put the finishing touches on most of the electrical work in the home. We hung lights, put in switches and outlets late into the night on several occasions this week. Now the focus is on putting covers over everything. After the cabinetry is installed we will be able to finish with the remainder of the lights and outlets. This picture is showing the newly hung outdoor lights by the newly placed garage doors.


Garage door installations has begun. My cousin, Jason Beck, owns Allstar Garage doors down in American Fork. He was able to get me a good deal on these doors. We are working with a company locally to have them installed. This is certainly a better look than the blue tarps.



All of the tile flooring was completed in the laundry and bathroom areas of the house. Just in time, too, as the cabinets have arrived.



Viki has been busy decorating the kid's rooms. This was Landen's choice for the theme of his room.

This has been our method of kid control while Viki and I put in time at the house. Junk food and movies make the best babysitters.