House projects! Love-hate relationship, am I right?
This is what I wrote last Monday.
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.
This is what the floor looked like on Monday, Freshly sanded.
What’s the expression, we plan, and god laughs? Well, this one was a real knee-slapper!
Apparently I won’t have my house back for yet another week.
Wednesday: floor was sanded, and 1 coat of clear finish left the floor looking like we stained it orange.
Thursday: sand the whole thing again
Friday: clear finish, coat 2.
Monday: light sanding, then clear finish, final coat. (#3)
Friday 5/16: furniture in place, maybe. If not Friday, then Monday.
Let’s talk orange, which by the way is my least favorite color (except as an accent).
Family emergency for the installers on Wednesday when the floor would be sanded and the first clear coat on. Newborn, just a couple of weeks old, very unusual problem, in the hospital. (Baby is fine now, and home!)
So the guy who was to do coat 1 is the father of the newborn, so someone else did it. Much younger, apparently with less experience, and that’s how we ended up orange. I’ll tell the “orange” story mid-week when I start to get antsy as I wait to be able to move furniture back in.
Here’s what it looks like now.
Original post from Monday, just in case anyone is interested.
Day 1: Carpet Out, Hardwood Installed, Not Sanded Yet (Open Thread)
Open thread!
frosty
For me, house projects have been more like love, hate, love, hate, as follows:
Talk over the plans, draw them up – love
Hire a contractor. Deal with the contractor, spend the money – hate
Finished product – love
20 years later, some things not done right, looks worn, realize what you should have done – hate
The two best days in a boat (or house) owner’s life: the day you buy it and the day you sell it.
RaflW
Hope you get to enjoy it all soon!
We’re in an appliance shopping haze here at the cabin. 25 year old dishwasher sprung a leak, so it’s kinda urgent. We’ve picked a Bosch, that’s the easy part. But three week wait for install? eeep.
And we’re going stainless after white. And the white fridge sucks unexpectedly defrosted turkey balls, so how about a new fridge? And that 25 year old Tappan coil range? Well, okay.
But Consumer Reports reviews of most new appliances (esp owner feedback) is all so terrible, it’s deeply disillusioning.
The guy at the old-school small town dealer said twice in our long visit that we might want to suck it up and keep the stove. “If it’s lasted 25 years [nb: with maybe 8-12 weeks of use per year since it’s a cabin], it’ll probably last longer than any new range with a computer” and he’s probably right.
So maybe we just get the dishwasher and be done with it? The fridge is truly terrible.
Spanky
@RaflW: Average life span of appliances with electronics in our house is about 5 years.
When they inevitably fritz out, a repairman will show up in a few days, look at it, and declare that it needs a new board, which of course is not in stock and should be here in 2-3 weeks (before tariffs). Pay him $100 for showing up and telling us that and send him on his way. New board cost 2/3 as much as a new appliance.
Or, go to appliance store, pick out new unit, and it’s delivered in 3 days.
Quite the racket.
Suzanne
The finish looks great, not orange at all.
Spanky
@RaflW: Oh, and if you do get electronics, make sure the unit is unplugged when you go back home.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Yeah, thankfully we figured out the orange problem and fixed it!
Another Scott
I’m glad you’re seeing the end of the tunnel.
Beautiful floor.
Wood is a funny thing. We have a bunch of cherry furniture pieces that have darkened quite a bit over the years since they were made. Sunlight, especially, has to be considered.
Your floor will likely darken over the years and the orange will be less pronounced.
This post has some thoughts on color choices to enhance or tone-down the floor.
Good luck! And enjoy!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@RaflW: Appliances make me crazy.
We have replaced every appliance in our house since we purchased it. Dishwasher broke and was repair was more than replacement. Stove was gas and we replaced with induction. Fridge was waaaaaay too small and didn’t always stay shut. Washer and dryer were also really small and inefficient. Just replaced the 40-year-old furnace with a much more efficient model. Old house life, man!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Photo from when it was orange.
Suzanne
@WaterGirl: You’re lucky to have such gorgeous variation in the planking. It looks fabulous.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: You missed the part where I said we fixed the orange. :-)
So you must still think it looks orange. boo!
The installer said the floor will lighten over time, with light. My friend got the same kind of floor, finished by the same guy, and her’s has gotten a bit lighter over 3 years.
My cherry cabinets did indeed get darker over time.
Suzanne
@frosty: What you described is basically every project I work on. LOL.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: They don’t make appliances like they used to!
eclare
@RaflW:
I have a Bosch dishwasher, and it is extremely quiet and works well. A few years after I bought it, it stopped working, but it had come with a five year warranty. I called the local Bosch service place, and I had a new control panel installed, no muss, no fuss, free of charge.
The guy who repaired it said his guess was some kind of electrical charge, not anything to do with Bosch. Seems likely to me, my hoise is old and the wiring is a house of cards (I still have knob and tube wiring).
Enjoy your new dishwasher!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: My sister would HATE the variation, but I love wood (unstained!) and I like the variation.
WaterGirl
@eclare: My dishwasher is a Bosch. Best dishwasher I have ever had, for sure.
WaterGirl
Big thanks to the person who clued me in on the Jeni’s ice cream location finder in the thread earlier this week!
eclare
Beautiful new floor, WaterGirl. I’m curious about the shelving, that’s a lot of shelves! Was it there when you bought the house?
WhatsMyNym
@RaflW: Go check out Bens Appliances & Junk for his recommendations on Fridges. One of the big problems they have is in-door ice dispensers, so stay away from those.
Yale Appiances are very good reference as well, because they talk about what repair techs are having problems with.
eclare
@WhatsMyNym:
I’ve heard that about the in-door ice dispensers. They seem like overkill to me, it doesn’t trouble me to open a door.
NotMax
Renovations expand to fit the maximum inconvenience to the client.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
The good news is that dishwashers now are vastly better than those from 25 years ago. They actually wash dishes, rather than doing little more than sterilizing them. We’d been limping along with a mediocre old Kenmore dishwasher for years, then replaced it with a Bosch three years ago. The only prep I do before putting plates and dishes in the dishwasher is hold them under the faucet a second or two to wash any loose food off. That’s it.
One potential problem with replacing a fridge is that they’re a few inches taller than they were a generation ago. So if your old fridge fits into a space that has cabinets overhead at a height designed for 1990s-era refrigerators, the only thing that’ll fit in there is a really basic low-end fridge. (IIRC, Suzanne went through some stuff recently due to this.) Of course, if this is your cabin that’s just a weekend/vacation getaway, a low-end fridge might be all you need. And it might not have all that electronic crap.
ArchTeryx
And for something completely different: Internet drama, that I am far too old for, turning deadly serious.
I’ve finally been subject to one of those infamous social media dogpiles. This is due to a very unfortunate threat I made to someone openly declaring they were going to rip me off. They were transgendered. They’re also a domestic abuser and know every trick in the book.
So they instantly rallied the LBGTQ+ community – the extremely online LBGTQ+ community, at least – against me. And 3/4 of people I once knew as friends have blocked me, while the leaders of the lynch mob run victory labs declaring a victory for LBGTQAI+ people everywhere!
I’m out $800, most of my friends, and watched someone I trusted for 15 years turn into an abuser. I “owe” a whole lot to Trump, but it was my own temper that gave them the opening they needed. I share blame in this one.
I’m sorry, Sister Golden Bear. It’s not much, but its something.
scav
Cherry doesn’t even look classically cherry until it’s aged a bit.
NotMax
@RaflW
Happy with my glass top Amana range. Minimally gimmicky.
Another Scott
@RaflW: We went through the fridge and dishwasher thing a few months ago. Replaced a roughly 20 year old Kenmore (Amana) bottom freezer fridge with an LG 3 door thing with ice and water in the door (and another ice maker in the freezer that we don’t use). Very quiet, works very well, huge amount of space inside for the two of us. It’s great.
For the dishwasher, replacing a maybe 30 year old Whirlpool, we also got an LG. It’s very quiet (the loudest noise is water flowing in and water flowing out, which probably depends on the details of your cabinets and plumbing, but not nearly silent like some Boschs. Lots and lots of cycles, delayed washing, countdown timer display, tiny LEDs to indicate that it’s running or done, choice of handles, fully stainless interior with high quality rollers, lots and lots of adjustments, etc. I couldn’t see spending 50% more for a Bosch with similar features, myself, but we only use it maybe once a week rather than every day. Works very well (I generally use a ~ 3 hour heavy duty cycle to make sure oatmeal bowls that sit in it for 3-4-5 days are clean the first time, but I haven’t tried to find the minimum required). It gets all the red residue out of the pottery bowls I use for chili, which is hard for me to totally eliminate in hand washing. I use the blue (“Dawn”) Cascade liquid – I refuse to use any sort of pods.
I almost ordered a new range, but I really want a dual oven with an induction cooktop which only GE seems to have and GE makes me nervous after some bad experiences with them years ago and not liking our 60 year old pushbutton GE range… ;-) As far as I know, what kills fancy electric ranges is people using the high temperature cleaning option and cooking the electronics. It seems like a design flaw, but as long as you don’t do that, they generally seem to work well. But, yeah, the horror stories in the reviews are pretty bad.
Anyway, my $0.02. Happy hunting!
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
However long you think it’s going to take at the beginning, double it. Then wait a day and double it again. Then you might get your house back a week after that. Mostly.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Now if we could only fix the other orange problem.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I’ve learned from J not to argue about colors!
:-)
Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Dishwasher tips and tricks. Good info.
eclare
@ArchTeryx:
Oh no! I’m so sorry!
trollhattan
@RaflW: @Spanky:
Strictly anecdotal but our old, new to us house had 100 amp service, an upgrade by the PO from the original something less than that fuse panel.
We did a central HVAC install and then a kitchen remodel, requiring bumping service to 200 amps.
Afterwards, and it took awhile to sink into my thick head, I realized my continual replacement of light bulbs and electronics had reduced to hardly ever. My takeaway is that voltage dips and spikes were committing electricide on them all. Raising capacity eliminated exceeding it periodically. NB if the utility’s supply is experiencing spikes and dips, you need power management in the house to tame it and protect the electrics.
We installed a swathe of Miele gear as part of the kitchen remodel and they all lasted about twenty years, the Dacor range about fifteen. We stuck with those brands and fingers crossed we can approach those numbers again.
The fridge had its door fall off (on my foot) so nothing electrical failed there. The replacement (Kitchen Aid) is now shedding plastic bits and IDK how much longer we can tolerate that before shopping. Fridges have become VERY complicated gizmos and I’m leery of longterm parts availability, especially from the Korean brands who seem to have taken complexity the furthest.
To quote Cole: this fucking old house.
Phylllis
@eclare: We replaced the GE dishwasher that came with the house with a Bosch last year; worth every penny. When the GE fridge gives up the ghost, we’re going with a Bosch for that as well.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: We upgraded our electrical service, too.
There is a lot of innovation in the commercial sector w/r/t building. We can prefabricate entire panels of walls with all utilities in them, or entire rooms if they’re small. I have a dream of being able to do housing that way, but the problems are standardization and scale.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Just caught Jocelyn Benson on MSNBC. She’s the current Michigan Secretary of State and running for Governor. Based on that short interview she seemed really impressive. If she’s a reflection of the quality of candidate the Dems are running the State should be fine. Hopefully they can find someone equally good to run for the open Senate seat.
raven
We have a Bosch hybrid heat pump and gas furnace. It rocks.
mrmoshpotato
Mexico sues Google over ‘Gulf of America’ name change
WaterGirl
@eclare: I put in the shelving. That room used to be a garage and the ceiling slants, so it’s only 6.5′ tall at the back end of the room.
The shelving brings it out a couple of fee where the ceiling is distinctly taller, plus you see the stuff on the shelves and don’t think “that’s a low ceiling”.
Plus, I have a ridiculous amount of pretty things like glass and pottery, so it gives me space for stuff like that in addition to books.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: The French have a phrase for that, which loosely translates into “taste and colors” along with a “what are you gonna do” hand gesture. :-)
Miki
@WaterGirl: When I bought my 1925 house 19 years ago, it hadn’t been updated since 1965. The bedroom, dining room, living room, and back room were all covered in olive green sculptured carpet. I had the carpet removed, which revealed maple floors covered in very old orangey shellac. (The back room was originally an open porch, so the boards under that carpet are some kind of pine/porch board. Because there’s only unheated crawl space beneath that room, I kept the green carpet, planning to replace it in the future. Uh huh ….)
Those orangey maple floors cleaned up beautifully!
The boards are all different shades, which I love. Clear coat, no stain was the perfect choice.
Back in 1925, apparently maple was the cheap flooring. I feel like I scored big-time, 80 years later.
Jackie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Keep your eyes out for Mallory McMorrow. She’s currently state senator, but has raised her profile a lot on CNN and MSNBC – starting when she raised hell on the state senate floor to a MAGA woman senator accusing her of being WOKE.
Eunicecycle
@Miki: wow it’s a beautiful room! And the floors are beautiful! The green carpet maybe preserved them for you.
WaterGirl
@Miki: Gorgeous! I love maple.
The *rest of my house is hardwood floors, a combination of white maple and red maple that makes it interesting. And apparently back then the oak wasn’t the wide-open grainy oak that a lot of furniture is made of.
*except the kitchen and the bathroom, which are tile.
My kitties are pokers, so this gets rid of the carpeting in the room where my kitties prefer to puke. :-) Which is the whole reason for giving up the carpeting.
dnfree
We bought a new GE electric stove and microwave in 2021. Microwave needed a new computer chip a year later, fortunately under warranty. Repair person told us “oh, yeah, that was during Covid, lots of bad chips then.” Great.
KrackenJack
@ArchTeryx:
That’s a horrible thing to go through. Hope it gets better from here on out.
Rose Judson
Living vicariously through you here, WG, as I will be doing this next year.
Marc
We bought a Bosch dishwasher roughly 20 years ago. After 10 years, the control logic board (literally) melted down. We called Bosch service, they came out and fixed it for free. Turns out they have a (lifetime?) free replacement warranty on this particular logic board, as they have a tendency to go up in flames.
WaterGirl
@ArchTeryx: What you’re going through is hard. It’s tricky these days, even more so than it always is.
Even here on Bj, if you criticize Hakeem Jeffries, does it have anything to do with race?
I generally love Hakeem, and when I criticize him it’s about something he’s done, or hasn’t done, and it has nothing to do with his race.
But to someone who has spent a lifetime seeing black people judged by impossible standards, it looks different.
Not to mention that when you feel threatened in an existential way, even things that you would have experienced differently a year ago can feel threatening. And people are circling the wagons, as they should be in a time of crisis.
I am sorry for your loss.
WaterGirl
@Rose Judson: My advice? Choose someone that you completely trust.
The people I used didn’t bat an eye when I said this is orange, I really don’t like it, and it doesn’t look like the sample.
We figured out what the problem was and now the floor is good. I really like the way it turned out, but I’m guessing most of you guys don’t because all the talk is about appliances with just a couple of comments about the floor.
That’s okay, I’m the one who has to like it, not anyone else.
WaterGirl
@RaflW:
If you hate the fridge, get a new fridge. That’s my advice.
Marc
I just retired from a Civil Engineering research center where we worked with a number of companies that were manufacturing CAD customizable exterior/interior wall panels for both single and multi-family housing. The most famous of these companies is BoKlok in Sweden, they were originally an IKEA spinoff looking to manufacture “flat-pack” custom homes for sale through the stores.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I feel lucky (knock on wood). We have the dishwasher we bought in 2000, the fridge we bought in 2006 and the professional gas range/oven hubby had when I met him in 1989. Now ask me about washers………😂😂😂😂
Suzanne
@Marc: Yeah, there’s been a bunch of startups trying to tackle this challenge! Some friends/former colleagues have gone to work for a couple of them. It’s absolutely technically feasible. Profitability, regulatory environment, aesthetics remain difficult.
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: I’m very curious about the orange solution, as I had a similar problem with the fir boards in my kitchen (never solved).
Suzanne
@Marc: I just read that BoKlok is now under the Skanska umbrella. Skanska operates in many countries….. maybe they’ll have the financial runway to make it work. I’m sure it’ll be unprofitable for a while.
Kayla Rudbek
@trollhattan: sometimes I wonder if I should put more surge protectors in. We rarely get power outages here as the lines into the neighborhood are buried. However we just had a 2-hour outage today because someone hit one of the unburied sections (maybe on a telephone pole) with a car. My parents I think are going to get a backup generator as they had a power outage that lasted most of a weekend.
Rose Judson
@WaterGirl: Thanks. Yes, I have two people in mind, both of whom are vetted by friends. It’s just a matter of saving up the £5K it’ll take to do the whole downstairs of my (fairly small) house.
rikyrah
But, your house will look so beautiful in the end 🤗
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
My dishwasher is where I put the washed dishes to dry. My furnace/AC has been replaced not long ago. My fridge is I have no idea how old but works fine. (I live in an apartment, none of this stuff is mine but the company that owns this place does a pretty good job)
frosty
@Suzanne: I’m sure you know the Six Phases of a Project. I had it posted on my cubicle wall at work since I was a PM for most of my career:
1- enthusiasm
2- disillusionment
3- panic
4- search for the guilty
5- punishment of the innocent
6 – rewards for the uninvolved .
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: There were two things that contributed to the problem.
One. The fellow who put on the first coat used a roller, like a paint roller, and he dipped the roller into the bucket to get more of the “clear” solution, which dries clear but actually looks milky white when it goes on. They kept telling me the “clear” solution would dry clear, but it clearly dried orange. I could see that the “clear” solution in the bucket looked like someone had blended a cantaloupe. It wasn’t milky white at all.
They normally use a T-bar to apply the coat. In that case, you drizzle the milky white solution on the floor and the T-bar (sp?) spreads it along, but there’s no roller – it’s fixed in place. And there’s no dipping into a bucket, you just repeat the drizzling of the milky white solution until the room is done. So that was part of the issue.
Two. After they sanded off the “orange” and got to the wood again, I asked them to wipe it with a damp cloth so I could get a feel for what the color would look like with the finish. Just doing a tiny little area, I’ll be damned if the cloth didn’t look the color of cantaloupe!
So somehow with the sanding, oils or something was being released from the wood. So they washed the floor with a white rag by hand, doing little sections and then rinsing the rag in a container with water. Holy shit! It didn’t take long for the rinse water in the container to look like the color of bright orange kool-aid. So they would spill that out and get fresh water for each section.
Three. Then as soon as the floor dried from the bit of water, they applied the sealer using the T-bar instead of the paint roller. So there was no picking up the orange color on the paint roller and dipping it into the solution – which is what had been done the first time. (which kept adding orange, so the wood surely got more orange as it went on.)
Anyway, if they had used the T-bar the first time as they usually did, it’s quite possible that the problem wouldn’t have shown up. But I do think getting some of the surface “orange” oil off before immediately applying the sealer probably helped, too.
Does that make sense to you?
WaterGirl
@Rose Judson: Have them do a small room first so if you run into anything unexpected like I did, they don’t have to re-sand the whole house! :-)
scribbler
@WaterGirl: I love your floors! And you were right to push them to get rid of the orange you weren’t happy with. So often it’s hard to push for changes when a contractor has already completed part of the task. Good for you!
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
The problem is that as one manufacture upgrades/tries to talk you into the “much better!” whatever because the only way they make money is to sell as much stuff as possible. They could charge more but many wouldn’t buy the far more expensive stuff – because it’s not financially realistic for most people. And is likely not a lot better.
I used to manufacture tooling used by others to make products for them to sell. Much of it brand name things people would recognize. It is not cheap to do this, it takes knowledge and skill to do and many did not want to spend the effort to get hired/paid.
Once made a tool that made an all in one stereo system cover. Clear plastic so the mold, made of tool steel, took 2 of us 3 months to finish and polish it to the necessary smoothness and finish. Several types and levels of compounds till the last polish – a very, very fine diamond compound. The metal looked like a very expensive mirror. And it was.
Ruckus
@frosty:
I worked making tools for others to use to make plastic products, it’s called mold making. My comment above this one is about one we made, but the list of customers would include names of companies that many would recognize and some here would have seen/used the products that came out of the tools we made, as many of our customers were commonly known manufacturing companies, in several different areas of commerce, many of them national consumer product companies.
Another Scott
@NotMax: 👍
He’s good, and he’s right about those things. Good show!
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. Glad you got it figured out!
(We have conventional white (?) oak floors here in NoVA.)
Best wishes,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
So there was an Elizabeth Kübler-Ross of project management, then.
WaterGirl
@scribbler: I would have hated them every day. That didn’t seem like a good outcome. :-)
It’s already going to be a bit jarring to go from cream colored carpet in that room to wood. So liking the wood is important.
So glad you like them!
SteveinPHX
Beautiful flooring! Wish you the best with it.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Me, too!
In all these years, I have only been disappointed with the results of a house project once, and that was my first bathroom remodel. I prefer not to have a repeat! :-)
WaterGirl
@SteveinPHX: Thanks! It’s brazilian walnut, which has a lot of variation in the wood.
The Unmitigated Gaul
Great result.
At the risk of asking a stupid question… what are the ties across the floor in the first photo for?
WaterGirl
@The Unmitigated Gaul: They put tension on the boards to keep them pulled tightly together so there are no gaps.
NutmegAgain
Looking swanky. Fortitude for the journey to the new floor. And it will be warm(er), so windows can be opened as necessary.
They Call Me Noni
@WaterGirl: our Bosch dishwasher is the only appliance we haven’t had to replace in the 10 years we’ve been in our house. When it does crap out I will replace it with another Bosch.
WaterGirl
@NutmegAgain: I haven’t heard that word in awhile. We have to step up with these words ourselves now that Biden is out of office. Thanks for doing your part.
WaterGirl
@They Call Me Noni: I just hope that the 18 of us :-) who have sung the Bosch dishwasher praises in this thread *
haven’t somehow conjured up a series of dishwasher issues.*shush, WG, don’t even say that out loud!
BigJimSlade
It’s looking great!