Upstairs: Floored!

Yep, as of today, they’re done! (pretty much.)

And some fun things had to happen for this. After I got to a certain point in the room, I didn’t have enough boards that were the same width to run the length of the room, so I was coming up really, really short. Off to the salvage yard again! And this made the question of the closet pretty easy. I spent an extra hundred and had enough to run them through.

But now we’re not in a square room anymore; there are walls in the way. So I had to dado boards with the radial arm saw. I angled the boards against the saw fence so the blade could make kinda square cuts part way through the floorboards.

Then I broke off the little slivers of wood with a scraper and cleaned the cut up by sliding the board back and forth against the saw blade. Yes, that actually works! And here’s how it looks in the end.

And I’ll give you a gratuitous action shot. Just because I never have photos taken while I’m actually working. Note: I’m measuring. There are safety glasses on my forehead and I moved them down before I made the cut.

There’s one spot I had to rig. There was a wide floorboard that I ran into the closet even though I was about 2 feet short, so inside the closet I had to extend it with 2 skinnier boards, one that I had to rip down to fit. But who cares? It’s in the closet.

And… let’s see the finished product! OK, to be fair, it’s unfinished. Floor finishing is happening near the end.

And now, after a 9 month break, I’ve gone back to insulating the front bedroom’s outside wall!

You can see lots of globs of insulation coming out. Where pieces of the original plaster fell out and there were gaps behind the insulation, I would stick the wand on the Great Stuff can through and inject it with foam. I think at this point it’s pretty well sealed. And like I said back when I was doing this before, it’s important to block paths for air to move around between the brick and the insulation, because when it’s cold, any moisture that hits the cold brick will get it wet and damage it. That’s why I have rigid foam instead of fiberglass batts on this wall.

Back when I was doing this at the beginning of the year I got really, really frustrated with how hard it was to get the foam board to stay on the wall. Screws are useless with my soft brick. Still, I think this is the best way to do it, so it’s worth the trouble. This time, I bought adhesive made specifically for drywall and paneling, so it grabs faster. And as you can see in this photo, I have boards pressed against the troublesome pieces. I’ve been driving screws right into my newly patched flooring and the trim around the windows (which is eventually coming out). I think it’s held.

Change is coming in the Crooked House! Stay tuned!