Construction Update 6: A Few Things Finished!

There is dirt under my finger nails is the same color as the weeks old bruise under the nail of my thumb.  I took last week off of work.

Adam took off the week before Christmas, and the upstairs flooring is 99% done: the bedrooms have wide maple planks, the great room upstairs is oak parquet, and a friend laid most of the tiles in the upstairs bathroom.

The stair landings are done.  Risers placed. Treads still need to be cut and installed.

It was my goal to tackle a giant pile of reclaimed flooring and get it ready to install. To install our heat system, our floors need to be sanded and finished.  I wanted to install heat the first week of January.  Those days have come and gone, and while the pile of flooring is now half the size that it was when I started, it still stands between heat and appliances.

I sort boards by tongue and groove size.

I scrape layers of dirt that peel away like thick apple skins from tongues and grooves. 

It is infuriatingly slow.  I wear away the corners of the scraper. 

I carry the cleaned boards from the house to the shop. 

I square off ends and then run each board across the router.  Wood flakes away as I cut grooves.  

I sort as I go, square off the other end and change router bits, and then handle each board two more times to cut a tongue.  I have been scraping boards for almost a week. When I go to bed and close my eyes, my mind continues scraping. 

I carry everything back to the house and pile the boards up for Adam.  He lays my 4 days of boards,  in just over a day… I struggle to keep up.

It is hard to remember that we are capable of finishing things: 

I wire two stained glass light fixtures that I finally pull from their attic hiding spot.

As I make the walk back and forth from the shop to the house, and look through the sliding door, light illuminates white tree trunks against a yellow wall.  It is warm and welcoming and always makes me smile. Of all the things we have done, this is my favorite and the first thing that truly makes this project feel ours and real. 

Years ago, I checked out a printmaking book from the library, and saw a project that I categorized into the “someday I hope/wish” category of my mind.  As soon as we finish painting the walls of our house I check the same book out again.  The book is called Print Workshop:hand-printing techniques + truly original projects written and illustrated by Christine Schmidt.  I leaf through and lay the book in front of the rest of the family.  “We are doing this”, I say.  “The leaf shapes are all wrong”, Adam notes.  

We start this project at the end of November.  
Little friends come over to help us tape and paint trunks.

The kids cut stencils while Adam tackles bedroom floors. We add branches. 

The kids and I tape leaves across the wall.  Moving the stencils here and there, sponging one dark yellow leaf after the other, until it just seemed right. 

We let the paint dry and the kids run off to play. 

I open up containers of sample paints that have stacked up and brush "crushed ice" and "edamame", colors that were ultimately rejected for the walls, on the trunks.  I step back and wait for the paint to darken as it dries.  

It took us a month, but there it is, finished.  FINISHED!!!!



I trudge past the view and keep moving.