Back to Work - Day 112

After the President's Day weekend, it was back to work for me and the tile crew as well. Monday the 16th was Day 112 of Project 713.

The guys have made a lot of progress in all of the bathrooms. They've put down all of the bonding material, the tile and spacers in all four rooms.

They've also put in the subway tile for the showers in the guest rooms upstairs and on the first floor.

The master bathroom will take a bit longer, as you might expect, since it has a bit more intricate floor work as well as the custom shower and then some more decorative patterns on the walls.

The shot above was taken while the mason was making sure he had enough tile for the floor of the shower. Here's a nice shot below of the finished product, plus you can see that he was able to create a nice diamond pattern with the marble floor.

They've made some progress but there's still a ways to go with the walls and then of course all of the grout. It's just nice to see how our color and pattern selections are working out.

Oh, and in case you're wondering- the picture below was Grace's class project in which she was supposed to make an animal out of recycling products.

You're looking at her creation, "Graham" the Gator. He's made from a plastic cupcake container, a cardboard pizza box, a plastic powder cappuccino mix container, Pringles cans, plastic Perrier bottles, toilet paper roles and duct tape. I know, right?! She chose a Gator? No respect...

Winter Break Ski Trip

The President's Day long weekend doubles as the 'Winter Break' for the Atlanta Public Schools system, so we were looking for something fun to do on Sunday. Fortunately, a group of parents with kids all around the same age got the idea to go on a group ski trip up to western North Carolina, to a small outfit called Sapphire Valley Ski Resort.

Since around 75% of the children had never skied before or were beginners, this place was perfect because there was a bunny hill, a tubing hill and then a very modest adult hill.

Grace had never skied before, so she took part in the group lesson with the rest of the newbies.

They started them out with the basics, such as their stance and even just moving around on one ski.

By the end of the lesson, they were cruising down the bunny slope on just their skis, and no poles. In the picture below, that's me on the right with the gray jacket chaperoning her and a friend down the slope.

Grace was a little tentative at first, but by lunchtime she'd gotten her confidence up and she worked up the courage to try the 'big' slope. The video below is Grace's last trip down the 'bunny' slope before going "big time!"

She made it down probably 6 or 7 times without any major bumps or bruises. In the picture below, Grace is posing with her friend Sophia who is a pretty experienced skier. They had just finished a wicked run down the main slope.

However, on about the 4th or 5th run, another parent with his son got out of control and totally slammed into Grace, knocking her over. I was right there, so I was able to get her up quickly and make sure she understood that wasn't normal slopes behavior and NOT her fault.

All in all, she had a great day and will probably make major improvements and enjoy skiing from now on. The picture below is Grace and some of her friends, tuckered out from skiing, waiting for their dinner at Cracker Barrel.

Valentine's Day - Day 110

It's Valentine's Day and I love the fact that the tiling of the bathrooms has begun!
The crew finished up putting the cement-board in the shower of the master bathroom.

The rest of the shipment of tile arrived so I helped the guys make sure they delivered the boxes to the correct rooms. Below is some of the pre-fab patterned tile for the master shower.

Below are the boxes of all of the subway tile that will be strongly featured throughout several of the bathrooms.

I checked in on the progress a couple of times and here's what got finished that day.

The mason also started putting the decorative tile pieces together to start putting that shower floor in.

I'm not sure how much more they got finished over the weekend because I was out of town on Sunday, so I'll be back next week to document the progress.
I'll have some fun pictures from a short ski trip on Sunday to show, though.
Flip

Looking Fine on Day 109

We've reached the end of the second week of February and it's Day 109. The process of tiling the bathrooms has begun.

The crew began putting down the cement board sub-floor in each of the rooms, including the laundry as you can see below.

They also started creating the form for the shower in the master bathroom, including the bench seat in there.

Kristin had to test out the bench for herself to see if it will be 'relaxing' enough :-), as well as convenient for accessing the handheld shower head on the wall.

Grace also wanted a closer look at her reading loft, so she climbed up a stepladder to check it out. It's pretty cool, but it's super high! We might need to get a zip-line or an elevator for that thing.

All of the tile is being delivered on Saturday and the guys will actually begin installing the tile.

More pics then!

Flip

Hardwoods Heaven - Day 107

We are at Day 107 on February 11th and the hardwoods are officially in. I was out of town for a couple of days on business and the crew was definitely busy while I was away.

We went with the White Oak 3 1/4" strips and it looks fantastic. We'll eventually be staining it much darker than the traditional 'honey' color we had before.

It will provide a great contrast to the white trim throughout the house. Having all new wood floors throughout the first floor that actually match and go in the same direction, especially in the entertaining room and kitchen area will be really nice.

The picture below is in Grace's old bedroom, which will now be our den or spillover bedroom.

In the photo below, you can see we also put the floors in the second floor landing and hallways. The bedrooms will be carpeted and the laundry will have ceramic tile.

I produced a couple short videos to help walk folks through our floor plan, starting with the first floor.

Now here's the second floor.

Up next will be the tile work in the bathrooms and the laundry and we should be getting the shipment of our cabinets in about a week or so.
More pictures then!
Cheers,
Flip

Holy Cow!

Here's a little bit of a sidebar from the house project. Since I work for the Southeast Dairy Association, I was invited to the annual University of Georgia Dairy Heifer Show at the Agriculture Exposition Center just off the UGA campus in Athens.

Grace had often told me how much she wanted to see some of the cows that I get to see all of the time through work, so I felt like this was the perfect opportunity.

She would get to see a TON of the best dairy young dairy cows in the state before they started giving milk, plus she'd get to see a bunch of children her age and a bit older who are showing the cows.

She got to meet a young girl from up in North Georgia, who was 9 and in her first ever show with her red Holstein heifer named Junie B, from the Junie B. Jones books. It takes a lot of discipline and love for the animals to do what these kids do, and they take it very seriously.

Later in the day, we were invited to visit the UGA teaching dairy which is out on the southeast outskirts of Athens.

We got a chance to see the baby calves, the young heifers, the brand new Jerseys with their award-winning genetics and of course, the working girls themselves - the full grown milking cows, some of them weighing as much as 1,800 pounds. That's a lot of milk!

Grace had a blast and got to see some of the newest calves born just this year. She was enamored with them and enjoyed letting them suck on her fingers.

I'll be back to posting more house pictures next week. I just thought you'd enjoy a brief interlude with Grace and the wonderful cows who produce the milk and other dairy products that we enjoy her in the U.S.
Cheers,
Flip

Day 102

We've arrived at a very important phase in the project, since as of Friday, February 6th, we've officially reached triple digits with Day 102.

As I've mentioned, things have gotten pretty slow, but the work will be much more highly detailed from now on.

This phase involves removing all of the old hardwood floors and sub-floor protection so that that new floors can be installed.

We initially had hoped to save our old floors and just fill in some of the areas that would be created when the kitchen and entertaining area got opened up.

Our flooring contractor made the unfortunate discovery and subsequent conclusion that we'd have to replace them all, since we had our old oak floors going in two different directions and our old kitchen was pine, and would have to be ripped out anyway.

Also, the oak had been refinished at least a couple times, so we'd really only get one more refinishing out of it before we had to replace it again.

Therefore, based on the labor involved in getting everything to match AND replaced, it made more sense to just rip it all out and start from scratch. At least this way it will all be new and match perfectly. I've been assured that we'll be much happier in the long run. I'm sure that's true, but we had hoped to save at least a little money there. Not so much...

About 90% of the floors have been removed, so they'll finish that and then start putting in the new ones next week. I'll put the new pictures up then.
Later,
Flip