I can't ever say the word "progress" without proclaiming it, and following it with similar proclamations of technology! and science! or sometimes scientific!advancements!. But today we're proclaiming kitchens, specifically concrete backer board. We have officially shifted from that uncomfortable phase at the start of any project where it feels, looks, smells, etc like you're doing more harm than good. Like in college, whenever someone would come over to my room and gasp at the mess, I'd (lie and) say that I had recently begun a major reorg. But with the un-fond farewell of the vinyl sheet floor and the installation of the concrete backer board, it's actually starting to look like we're making something. The smells, however, are still fairly ridiculous. We replaced the ghastly and ecologically evil smell of PVC with the really bizarre smell of Hardibacker. It's somewhere between dirty fridge, rotten fruit, and soil.
We did have a wee snafu, for which we give our relentless gratitude to Dave, our friend who is helping us out - slash- doing all of the hard work and math with the floor in exchange for legal tender. Dave noticed that a tiny section of the floor would sag when stepped on, between the new(er) heating vent and the wall. Fear swept across me as I braced myself for the possible diagnoses, but it turns out he could fix it. Super Dave!
Also, Super Joel! At the time, we were concurrently trying to clean out our condo in order to pass off the keys to the new lucky owner. Erik was up there, with his car and mine (long story), so I was stranded at the house with Dave. This was fine, because I was eating up everything Dave taught me about flooring and tools, and was happily put to work whenever possible, screwing in 800,000,000 screws on the concrete. Or something close to that. But when it came time to repair the subfloor with some 2x4 pieces, we looked at each other and said, okay, Julia go and get some 2x4s. Without a car. After considering walking to the hardware store (a mile), I called Joel who was over in no time with his beautiful and glowing wife and a not as glowing but certainly beautiful to us 2x4. Joel told me today that they somehow ripped that 2x4 out of their old kitchen, which was built in the late 20s. Now it's right at home again. Swoon!
Speaking of math, screwing down the backer board is strangely satisfying to my inner perfectionist and geek. I found myself, in between unsightly contortions trying to get the best angle for the cordless drill and my aching knees, calculating optimal distances between screws in order to get perfectly even intervals. I couldn't get it right, which makes me anxious to get back in there and finish up the rest of the floor. For the love of god, I am looking forward to driving hundreds of screws into smelly concrete. Help me.
In other kitchen news, I've finally finished sanding the cabinet bases. The doors are still in the garage, looking shiny. I've also vacuumed everything with my dad's shop vac. The hose on that thing is obnoxious and really hard to control. I feel like I'm wrestling a giant amazon freakishly large hose beast. Erik keeps insisting that we buy our own (vacuum, not amazon hose beast), but I am faking resistance because I know that my parents bought Erik a shiny new shop vac for Christmas. The man loves to vacuum.
Up next? Priming. We are prime for priming. We'll shoot to get that done Wednesday evening, because that's pretty much our only free time before the tiles go in this weekend.
In he meantime, I present to you a brief look at our smelly new concrete:
carnage from afar:
hot:
But more importantly, I hung stuff from the picture rail this weekend, too. Good news about picture rails: you don't have to vacuum beneath where you attach the picture to the wall. Bad news: your fingertips are already raw from sanding/weeding/scraping up floor glue, and the fine gauge wire you're using to hang will hurt.
Toss in a crazy experiment with sufocating grass and the two puny charlie brown strings of lights hung outside, and you have our weekend in a nutshell. Ah, nesting.
Monday, December 12, 2005
