It has been almost two years since we posted an update of our projects! It is about time to do some catching up!

April, 2011

Let's start with a fun little lighting project we did for a Saturday activity. We were perusing the local antique shop when we came across an old style lantern. We just happened to have one at home exactly like it, although in better condition. With a little bit of red paint to spruce up the new one and a few lamp parts from the hardware store we proceeded to convert them into electric lamps for our living room.

Wood Floor Reveal

After almost exactly one year of living with plywood floors we were able to install our new bamboo flooring last week! We think it looks AMAZING and it feels like a whole new house downstairs!
Originally, our plan was to go with this flooring from Lumber Liquidators, but after reading too many reviews about how easily it scratches and dents we opted to upgrade to what's called a strand bamboo. Something about the "stranding" process is supposed to make the bamboo extra durable, 150% harder than oak is what they claim. The guy at Lumber Liquidators said you could drop a hammer on it and it would be fine, now that's more what we're looking for!

Installing the first row was by far the most time consuming (and nerve wracking!) to make sure we got it a straight as possible.

There was a bit of a learning curve to using the floor nailer (the hardness of the bamboo did have a downside when it came to actually installing it!), but once we got the feel for it it worked pretty well. By the end of the first day our floor looked like this.

It surprised us how well the floor blended with the log walls. We were actually hoping for a bit more contrast, but we'll still get that when we add the kitchen cabinets.

So after 3 1/2 days of pretty constant work by Travis our downstairs now looks something more like this

and this

and this.

Slight improvement wouldn't you say? It's so exciting to be getting to some of the more aesthetically pleasing projects versus some of the more mandatory, but less beautifying things like plumbing and electrical!

The Unveiling

I decided to tear myself away from admiring our fireplace and mantel for a few minutes to share with you some pictures of our almost completed fireplace (grout work is still in progress). We are thrilled with the way it turned out!
It's hard to picture how it looked before compared to the grandeur of it now! It feels like it makes such a statement in the room and Travis did a superb job on the rock work in my humble opinion!

It was a big undertaking in time and money (at least for us), but we're pretty confident it was well worth the investment!

New Beams

We ordered the lumber for our beams this fall, not really sure when we would get around to replacing the ones around our fireplace, but knowing it needed to happen sometime in the near-ish future. What we had was doing the job, but was a bit makeshift as you

can see.Then one afternoon we got a fit of inspiration and decided to tackle it. So with a bit of muscle, some pounding and a lot of supporting we transformed our stairway from ugly makeshift beams to beautiful, permanent ones.All that's left to do is a bit of staining so they match the wood in the rest of the house.

Time to Get Kozy

Before winter hit, we were able to install our new fireplace. It's a Kozy Z42 that we were able to purchase locally here in McCall and install ourselves. It functioned just fine as is, but aesthetically we had a ways to go on the project.

The new fireplace requires zero clearance, so Travis has been working on building a frame around it to hide the stove pipe and one day (hopefully one day very soon) it will be covered with ledgestone and tile.
It looks better already, don't you think?

But before the stone and tile come the backerboard...

Our hope is that by the end of the month we will have the tile and stone installed. Here is a sneak peak at the ledgestone we are going to use. It was given to us by some friends who had leftovers from their house. We just have to see if we can purchase some corner pieces and we'll be set.

Tiling the Entry

The next project we tackled was tiling our entry way with some of the awesome slate tile we got in Boise (and completely weighed down the poor little car trying to haul it all back to McCall!). It's just a small area, but we really like the way it looks!

Travis started out by laying the HardiBacker and then screwed down some trim around the edge of it to mimic the height of our future bamboo floor. Then began the tedious process of laying the tile.

We love the natural slate tile, but because it's so "natural" it was very time consuming trying to match up the heights of all the tiles, arrange them the best we could so there weren't any drastic drops from one to the other and then use the mortar to even out the best we could!In "just" three hours we ended up with this!

Now we have a lovely, tiled entry way and it was worth all the time and patience it took to get it there (I think). I'm not sure we'll be quite so picky about the process when it comes time to lay the whole bathroom floor!

Chimney Demolition

Aside from being the one moving stuff back and forth while Dad and I worked on the floor, Mom was also the picture taker and the chimney brick remover. As a result we don't have many in progress pictures of the chimney removal. This first one is after the floor bricks were removed and the second is once the job is complete.

We moved the stove out, busted down the bricks, propped the chimney up, put subfloor below the supports, replaced the supports, put down a pad of bricks, and moved the stove back in!

The Projects Commence

Installing a new deadbolt was the first project on the list. It took longer than expected, but I'm sure it won't be the only project that doesn't quite go according to schedule!When employing the help of free labor it's alway best to tackle an exciting project like tearing out a wall...

Or creatively installing a chimney pipe on our new, free wood stove (courtesy of Larry and Sharon Burke)!