Four Years in the Making . . .
or The Installing, as it were.
Well, I’m getting pretty sick of this. I’ve had to get up at 7 AM two days in a row. And even worse, when I came out into the living room this morning, the flooring elves had failed to appear once again. I’m not leaving out snacks for them ever again.
So it looks like my son Chris and I (mostly Chris) will have to finish up the floor today. And by ‘finish up’ I mean, finally start actually laying it down.
And yes, this project did start 4 long years ago. But it’s Home Depot’s fault. I originally ordered the flooring on 12/6/10. It was supposed to in by 12/15, leaving me two months to get it installed before we headed out for the year. But that was not to be.
The flooring finally came in on February 12th, three days before we were supposed to leave. So 2010 was out. 2011 has faded into the mists of time so I’m not sure what happened.
But 2012-2013 was going to be THE year. I was going to do the floor during all the spare time I had while we were gate guarding. But gate guarding consisted of guarding, sleeping, and eating, so that didn’t work out either.
So here it is, 2014, and today’s the day.
Here’s the first section laid out. When we’re finished, there will be a nice transition strip covering the joint between the tile and the flooring.
Since we have to start from the edge, but want to be sure that the flooring seam runs straight from front to back, we left some slack around the edges to allow us to adjust things when we had built out to the middle. But Chris did such a great job measuring, we didn’t need to adjust anything.
The Allure flooring we’re using glue strips on the each edge and one end that hold everything together. But the strips do make it kind of difficult to trial-fit pieces without them sticking together prematurely.
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Right before Chris laid each strip down, I lightly wet-mopped the area with a sponge mop to pick up any last debris that might get under the tile.
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I will come back later and fill in the area behind the pedals so the flooring will go all the way to the firewall.
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Here the front section is completely done. Yaaah!
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And here’s the finished product. We’ll set the two front chairs in place on Monday afternoon after I finish the area under the dashboard.
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And here’s a close-up of the floor.
Chris did a great job, especially getting it all laid in one day. And I want to compliment myself on my great job as supervisor, which consisted mainly of handing him things and otherwise staying out of his way.
The reason I supervised is that one, I knew he would probably do a better job, and two, since you have to lay the strips down in a certain order, only one person can really be working on it at a time.
At least that’ my story and I’m sticking with it.
It’s Official!
At the upcoming 54th Escapade in Goshen, IN this coming May I will be giving my seminar on Gate Guarding entitled “Gate Guarding for Fun? and Profit”. Jan and I will be imparting much of the hard-won knowledge that we’ve accumulated gate guarding for 7 months the last two years. Hopefully we can tell you things we wish someone had told us before we started.
I don’t have the date and time yet, but I will let you know. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Brandi and Lowell are going to a 40th birthday party tonight for Brandi’s BFF, and the theme is The 70’s. Everyone is supposed to dress the part, and it looks like they’re ready to go.
Peace Out!
Thought for the Day:
Have you ever looked at someone and just knew the wheel was turning, but the hamster was dead?
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