Transition Strips Done!

Ok - the transition strips have been varathaned & installed so it's time to show you what they look like now.

This is the division area between the kitchen & the dining room. I'm glad that the dark colours of the lino & laminate work well with each other. The light transition strips will probably darken to a more rich yellow over the next year or so as it's exposed to sunlight, which will tie in with the cedar, pine & fir in the rest of the house.

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This last photo is of the change in direction, colour & type of laminate from hallway to office. There's a 45 degree angle in the wall where the office door is, so lots of tricky cutting to get the 2 types of laminate to match up with the appropriate space inbetween.

We went with this more red coloured laminate (walnut?) in the office because the wall colour is a gray/green & it works very well. With some black bookcases, it will look very classy. The gray colour of the laminate in the rest of the living space works very well with the red & yellow wall colours & is picking up the brown tones from the other woods - which are all more golden than brown.

Phil is already checking out what we have left for baseboard trim as I think he sees the light at the end of the tunnel & can't wait to see this all finished. It's a good feeling...

It's Laminate Laying Time!

It's funny to think we are now into the Renovation Stage of owning the house, but we are now upgrading our beautiful painted plywood floors to laminate.

We have chosen 'Midnight Barnboard' for our main living space (living room, dining room & entrance hallway) - with lino in the actual entrance & kitchen.

Before we started, we needed to fix a sag in the floor which meant that Phil was back to using his tools indoors & making a lovely mess...




We had just returned from a month long 'vacation' & wasted no time in getting things ready for our project.

The laminate arrived 2 days later than we were hoping, but just allowed us to work on another project down in the suite, as you will see at the end of this post.

This is our 'Midnight Barnboard' laminate.

We started in the living room, which meant we had to remove the pellet stove - not a fun nor easy thing to do! The white lay is a sound proofing layer we found while doing our weeks of research back in November. It came rather inexpensively from the US & I really hope it helps with breaking up the transfer of sound between our space & the suite. The suite bedroom is (unfortunately) right below where we have our TV...

Ok - DAY 1 saw us finishing up the living room area & we were able to move the pellet stove back in & get it hooked up & running again. It's still pretty chilly at nights & the days are dark & gloomy with rain. I hope we get to see the laminate floor in the sunshine soon!!

Phil finally got his toolbelt this Christmas!

DAY 2 - work moved now into the dining room & the area around the lino in the kitchen. A bit of tricky cutting was necessary around the curved drywall corners & up to the transition by the office.

I'm so glad we have central vac - I spent most of my time 'helping' by keeping the areas clean & keeping Phil a steady supply of boards for clicking into place.

Ooooo - I'm liking the way the laminate looks up against the lino...

Surprisingly, the laminate really isn't all that grey. The more we live with it & get used to the feel, the more it seems to pick up on some of the browns in the house. The lino isn't all grey either - there are hints of blue & rust/brown in it that warm it up.

DAY 3 - last bit of work is in the entrance hallway, which includes our large pantry closet. Lots of tricky cutting here too around the door frames & to the edge of the lino in the entrance.

By the end of the day, it was finished & we were exhausted. Looks great & seems to make the space feel larger...

DAY 4 - Tansition day - Phil's been busy making all our own transition strips out of fir. Lots of sawdust & noise & thankfully it has been a sun-shiney type of day.

Once the transition strips are cut, we'll have to varathane them & install them.

I love when the sun shines around here!!

We got down into the suite bathroom a few days before our tenant came back from holidays & put in the last piece of lino. I love how it goes so well with the blue walls & the red vanity!!

There will be some photos coming up later once the transition strips are varathaned. Stay tuned!

It's Lino Laying Day!

Wow - time surely does fly by when you are too busy working on other things than finishing the house. But here we are in December - Happy Sinter Klaas, by the way - Dutch Christmas. This little project is our gift to each other.

We 'booked' our good friend Bob to come over today to help, so in order to make the job go by quickly, we ripped up the kitchen before hand: removed the island, filled in the holes & gouges in the floor & vacuumed about 60 times!

We also had to make sure the lino was relaxed, so we rearranged the living room to make way for the large sheets of lino. Already the place looks different!

Phil got in there quickly with a nice sharp pair of scissors - a sharp knife might get away from you & leave you with a slice in the wrong direction! Measure 6 times before you cut...

The hardest part of it all was getting it placed properly over top the pipes from the island. Required a lot of slight adjustments before the knife was put to the lino & then a bit of fun as the accoustical glue was getting onto everyone's fingers...

Bob was teaching Phil how to get the lino cut in as close as possible to the cabinet & wall edges. A proper tool is essential & we are glad that Bob came fully prepared.

Now it's Phil's turn to get in there with the tool - a bit of tucking & folding & cutting under the cabinets & we are almost done!

Ta-da!
The edges of the lino will be taped down til we can get the laminate floor in towards the end of January, but the rest of it should be fine! We'll let it relax for about a week & then see how it sits before caulking any of the edges.
No glue in this job, baby!

Area 2 is the entrance. Not a square piece, but the job went by faster as Bob & Phil were now comfortable working together. Phil showed Bob a few tricks with his Dremel Mult-tool & they got the lino in under the door frame without having to remove the frame!

Completed entrance way!
Well, except for the baseboard, but that will come along after the laminate.

Speaking of laminate - I completely forgot to post the photos from our October laminate floor project. We found some beautiful laminate at Costco - of all places - & bought enough to do the office. We thought we would start with a small area before attempting the rest of the living/dining room.

There is a sound-proofing backing already on the laminate & we just had to click them together! Very easy & once again - no glue baby! We were astounded at how much 'stuff' we had stuffed into the office - it was not useable space til we had to haul it all out to do the floors. Now, it's much better organized & we have the room to install the Murphy Bed system & have a comfortable place for guests to sleep.


Well, that's about it for now - the laminate flooring will be in Vacouver just before the holidays, but we won't get it to Bamfield til after we return mid January. Hopefully the sun will be shining just as bright in Janaury as it was today when we install that! We also have some other projects lined up - one big one is a landscaping project to try & solve our flooded front yard situation... we'll fill you in on that as I think I'll be starting that in February.... before the spring rains come & flood us out again!

Winter Projects con't

February has been one of those months where the weather is just plain weird! It's my favourite month in that we get at least 14 days of sunshine, but mixed in with all that is rain, snow & general winter weather.

An easy project that we finished was to install some rope along the top edge of the wall where it meets the ceiling. An awkward angle to try to figure out for wood trim & it took Phil less than an hour to get it installed with his nailer.

There are 2 continuous pieces that run from the front of the living/dining rooms up the loft half walls....

....and through the loft to the back wall.

Am wondering how this rope will age - we didn't treat it with anything....








The next big project Phil just completed was to cut & install the window trim for the upstairs. We have 2 HUGE windows along the front & the one beside the dining table. (this is a close up of the dining room window & rope trim)






After Phil finished, I followed behind with some wood filler to hide the nail holes & applied a couple of coats of tung oil.
(I am just about to apply the tung oil to the trim around the sliding glass doors).




One tricky detail was how to deal with my cast iron plant hooks. Remove them from the wall & re-attach with a piece of wood behind or cut the top trim piece to go around the hook.... Phil cut around the hook... Hope it wasn't too much of a pain...

Will have to take photos of our window treatments when they arrive in the next couple of weeks. While we love the winter sunshine, because the sun is lower in the sky at this time of year, it can be brilliantly blinding - making sitting at the table almost unbearable. Then the temperature in the house starts to soar - ha, ha, ha - you say. But at 10 a.m. it can reach upwards of 20 degrees. And this is February. I have to open the sliding glass doors & we retreat to the back office if we want to work on our computers. What a waste of the view!! So we are getting some mesh roller blinds for the 2 big windows & some sheer curtains for the sliding glass doors. I'm not worried about the upper 2 levels of windows - at least for now. This should help also with the summer heat (not that we are inside during the summer) but also protect the paint & furniture from sun damage. Who'd ever thought we'd be complaining about sunshine here on the 'wet' coast!!

A Few More Windows...

Well, we are back home again after spending some time with the niece & nephew in Okotoks, Alberta. Didn't have the opportunity to update the blog while there, so here is what we did just after New Year's:

Phil brought in the scary-wooden ladder-of-death to install the trim around the other side of the glass art in the loft wall. Then I had to clamber up to put on a few coats of tung oil. Not my idea of fun....(and hanging over the top edge of the wall isn't too good an idea with a container of oil in one hand...tends to drip everywhere!)


Next window was the one at the bottom of the loft stairs - the glass block one. Very nice....








Last one before we left was the kitchen window. I really like how there appears to be a wave in the top of the trim. It's got a lot of physical feel to it too - in the last picture here - if you can click on it to zoom in, you can see that it's very textured & rough. There's even a knot hole showing the wall behind.

Lofty Trim Project

We got busy again - want to finish the work in the loft & move on down to the next level. Seems like time is running out, but that's the way it goes when you want things to be done...

Phil first installed the cedar ceiling trim & then worked on the windows.

These photos show all the trim finished with a couple coats of tung oil applied. We are using tung oil on all the cedar trim - it brings out the colours (reds, yellows, purples) & is a little different than varathane. We will probably have to re-apply the tung oil in a few years after it's all been exposed to the sun & has had a chance to season & fade a bit.














This is just a close-up of the detail at the ceiling peak around the central ceiling beam.








This is the trim around the glass art piece installed in the wall. I was pleasantly surprised that Phil made the trim so large - he just needs to trim it out on the other side of the wall - which should be tricky....don't know if we have a ladder tall enough for him to reach it easily!!

Lofty project

We have decided to work top to bottom for finishing projects. That means getting the loft dirty, dusty but complete.

We worked on the storage door covers (refered to as hatch covers also). There are 4 - 2 on each side of the loft. This storage space is great for items that are needed only a few times a year & once we start to condense our boxes, we should have enough left over space to install some built-in-drawers in the next few years.

Phil framed in the holes with the knotty pine we used on the ceiling, but I liked the look of the stain we used on the fir doors, so I put on a light coat of stain before a thick coat of varathane.

Gives it a bit of the old farm house look....

(as you can see, my storage space is already crammed with items that have to be either donated else where or find a proper home in the living space....)




I love the finished look! We had some left-over cabinet handles from the kitchen that we installed onto the doors & once they were dry, we popped them in place, with a small wood latch to keep the doors from popping out of the holes.