I told you guys I was playing musical chairs with furniture in preparation for the switch from carpeting to hardwood in my sunroom.
Day 1: Carpet out, Brazilian Walnut installed, not sanded and no clear coat.
Reserving judgment.
Apparently I won’t have my house back for another week.
Today: carpet out and hardwood installed.
Skip a day for the floor to do its thing.
Wednesday: floor will be sanded, and 1 coat of clear finish on.
Thursday: clear finish, coat 2.
Friday: clear finish, coat 3.
Weekend: finish gets to do whatever it does for 2 days before moving furniture back.
Monday: furniture in place, hopefully.
Dinner tonight:
Open thread!
WaterGirl
Not reserving judgment on the asparagus.
First asparagus of the year. It was perfect!
JWR
Re Dinner tonight: Bamboo shoots seasoned with… sawdust? Yum!
chrisanthemama
Gorgeous floor already.
WaterGirl
@JWR: Parmesan flavored sawdust, you goof!
The Audacity of Krope
Asparagus, the food so good it reminds you later that you ate it. Enjoy.
zhena gogolia
Floor looks promising.
WaterGirl
@The Audacity of Krope: Not if you eat pineapple at the same meal.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: Not sure why you’re reserving judgement on the floor. It’s gorgeous. Celebrate!
@The Audacity of Krope: I have no such response to asparagus. Fresh, as pictured, sawdust and all, it’s divine.
HinTN
WG – you dated today’s picture as if for April.
The Audacity of Krope
@WaterGirl: I had no idea. Mostly because I have a hard time combining those flavors. What would I even do?
Raoul Paste
Three coats of polyurethane is what you want. Two is not enough, especially with pets.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: There’s a book titled Five Acres and Independence that was popular in the 1970s. The author– I think Maurice Granville Kerns– was an experienced small-scale farmer, and he delivered a lot of good information.
Anyway, he said that commercial growers of asparagus called it “Sparrow Grass.” This was decades ago so I’m not sure farmers still call it sparrow grass.
Kerns knew fruit tree culture, and he had a good Q&A regarding it:
frosty
The floor looks great to me! The asparagus doesn’t look like enough food though.
The Audacity of Krope
Potentially insightful, but I don’t know enough to be sure.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: I took that as a variation on, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
WaterGirl
@HinTN: Worse than that. I put that one up on 4/5, and put it up again today by mistake. My morning brain must have thought it was still April.
WaterGirl
@Raoul Paste: They are definitely doing 3 coats of water-based something, but I don’t know what. I can ask.
SkyBluePink
Beautiful floor!
WaterGirl
@frosty: You know, I thought it would be enough. But today was a gardening day, and when I finished my asparagus right after I put up the post, I microwaved the bit of spaghetti that I saved last night because I was full.
So I ate that, too! Perfect amount.
WaterGirl
This post got a good 12 minutes, probably about what it deserved!
Jay
@WaterGirl:
Edge glued floating floor?
Otherwise, why the cinch straps?
It’s gonna shine when coated.
Ramalama
Friend of mine showed me a photo of her dinner last night. One of those frozen chocolate cakes that you defrost and enjoy. I said, “what, no dessert?” She is in her 70s.
That asparagus looks like it was a very good preamble to chocolate cake.
No One of Consequence
@WaterGirl: Wow. That is going to be one kickass floor. Out of idle curiosity, how are you going to oil/seal it?
As for dinner, and as other commenters have already noted, asparagus. Not on my list of vegetables that will pass my lips willingly, but whenever the subject comes up, I am reminded of Tim Robbins’ Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. In that novel, a character at a restaurant notes that another (not his dinner guest) has had asparagus with her meal. She acknowledges that she did, and he tells her: “Later on, our urine will smell exactly the same.”
Don’t know why exactly, but I laughed out loud the first time I read that. The rest of the book isn’t nearly as good as his other previous work (imho), so I don’t recall too much else of it.
Bon chance on the floor tho, that’s gonna be sweet. Hope you don’t live anywhere too humid though. (Or is that a concern with hardwood floors in humid areas? I’ve only experienced the jungle-sweating-doldrums of Iowa late summers.)
-NOoC
They Call Me Noni
That floor is gonna be gorgeous.
No One of Consequence
@WaterGirl: oooooh, I has an intrigued. Not enough to actually test it, but is this TWOO?
-NOoC
Jay
@No One of Consequence:
In areas with high temp and moisture swings, you don’t nail down the hardwood to the subfloor. You use a polyurethane glue to join the planks together edge to edge. Ideally you lay down an underlay, like wax or butchers paper.
This creates a “floating” slab, that allows it to expand and contract with temp and moisture changes, isolated from the house. You just need to leave the right amount of room, based on the temp and moisture along the walls, to allow that expansion and leave a hair thick gap when installing trim.
Currants
@WaterGirl: What?!?
Danielx
Floor will be awesome – provided there’s no water anywhere around, say from a hot water heater.
Jay
@Danielx:
Code now is a drain tray under the water heater, plumbed to a floor drain. Annual flushing and draining, no problem, tank liner bursts, no problem
Up until about a decade ago, IPE was mostly used for outdoor decks and a teak replacement on boats. Uncoated, it goes a silver grey, like teak.
prostratedragon
Floor does look promising.
WaterGirl
@No One of Consequence: They are going to do 3 coats of something water-based, but I don’t know exactly what. I will ask on Wednesday
Really hoping I love the floor once it’s finished. I am currently reserving judgment.
WaterGirl
@Danielx: Nowhere near the water heater. Of course, my existing hardwood floor is everywhere else in the house, including by the water heater.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
It will be a low VOC polyurethane.
I prefer McCloskey’s Gym Varnish, it’s what the NBA uses, but it’s high VOC’s, dries slow, so the house has to be empty for a week.
WaterGirl
@No One of Consequence: @Currants:
Yes, it’s true. If you eat pineapple and asparagus, the pineapple somehow cancels out that particular “feature” of having eaten asparagus.
bobbo1
@chrisanthemama:
ditto 200%