One evening in January, Sean called and said he & Brad (Dunham) were going to tear out the original kitchen floor. The very same kitchen floor I spent a significant amount of time on my hands & knees pulling out staples and hammering down nails. Thinking back, I don't recall being too upset by Sean's new proposal. Maybe because the entire time I had been pulling out staples and hammering down nails I had a gut feeling that my hard work would eventually be pointless. I had prepared myself for it. I did, however, ask why it was so essential for those floors to come out, reminding him of my hard work. His response was something along the lines of...the floor bows in the middle...completely uneven...will make it extremely hard to set the cabinets...it HAS to happen. And so it did.
Brad & Sean spent one night tearing out all of the kitchen floor, up to where it meets up with the dinning room. Half of the kitchen sits over part of the basement, while the other half sits over the crawl space (where dead bodies may or many not be buried! ha! that's just a hypothesis of mine!). When they tore up the floor over the crawl space, they did not find dead bodies, but they did find old treasures–an old walking cane, perfume box, egg basket, possible milk basket, shoe polish, an old skate–probably dating from the 1920's-40's. Pretty cool, eh? I remember Joni, Brad's wife, told me how excited Brad was when he got home that night. Apparently Joni didn't think all of this stuff sounded that great, but Brad knew I would love it! Some day when the house is done, some of those old treasures will be the knick knacks that fill our shelves!
At any rate, for a few days, to walk through the kitchen, you had to have great balance and no fear of heights, as only the floor joists remained. Myself & Mitch (brother) helped Sean get the floor joists to be level and lay down new sub-floor. I would love to explain the technical process of actually determining what level is, but it involves tying strings from each edge of the room, and every time I've asked about how it's done, I only get more confused. But I do understand everything following. Though now that I attempt to write it out, I can't explain it! (I'm a lost cause! ha! A poor student in the world of remodeling!) It involves a huge level, 2x4's (drilled to the existing joists), some glue, plywood, a nail gun, and hammer...I'll just let the photos speak for themselves! In the first photo, you can kind of get the jist of it–new 2x4's screwed into existing floor joists, evened up with the level, plywood glued & nailed to the new 2x4's. If you've been to the house since the new floor, I'm sure you would agree, it's a HUGE improvement!
Also, we put in new doors. Obviously, Sean put in the front door after Christmas, as that was his present to me. But Lowe's was having a huge contractors' sale on interior and exterior doors one weekend. Sean bought the two other exterior doors for the down stairs, as well as all of the interior doors. (I have yet to see them.) Turns out, he didn't even get them at Lowe's...Menard's price-matched the doors, plus was able to get us the satin nickel finish (the finish we plan to use everywhere) for no additional cost. YAY! The doors will eventually be painted to match the front door, and the jams will be painted white to match the rest of the trim on the exterior of the house! What a huge different new doors can make!
The top photo is of the old back porch door and the busted up screen door! They looked so sad sitting by the trash trailer!
My hope is by posting this, it will ignite a tiny little fire under Sean's butt and we'll start working again! Yeah, he still hurts every now and then, but he's been back to work for a few weeks now! It's time we finish this puppy! (at least enough to move in!)