Week 9 update (or hip hip hooray, the floors are done!)

Lucy and I went home last week, just for a few days, (we are back with my mom now)  but it was a fun treat to see the progress on the kitchen. I left right before the drywall was put in and the only pictures I've seen are the ones you all have so it looked a lot different when I walked inside. Craig had just finished installing the floors. They look great. Even Lucy was impressed. She kept pointing to the floor and signing daddy. When I say that yes, daddy did the floors, she signs "me" - yep, she thinks daddy did the new floors just for her. And I guess that is partially true.

Since Craig stained the existing hardwood floors in the rest of the house himself, we knew exactly what stain to use so (crossing our fingers) we should expect a nice match as long as we started with the same material. We weren't exactly sure whether the old stuff was red or white oak but from my research, it seemed like red oak was the more likely candidate so we went with that.

It was actually harder than anticipated to find unfinished wood flooring but Lumber Liquidators had just what we wanted. They have three grades of red oak: select, natural and rustic. We went with natural, which had a quite a bit of variation, similar to our old flooring and our favorite style-wise (a happy coincidence) but not the level of knots and open spots that the rustic would have.

Last Sunday he stained the floors and the color is perfect! Then he spent the next two days laying down the three coats of poly. We were a bit worried about that because the first time we went with Varathane oil-based satin finish but both Lowe's and Home Depot were out of that so we went with Varathane High Traffic Satin oil finish hoping there wouldn't be a visible difference. This morning the second coat was dry to the touch but glossier than the old area and I was a bit worried but by 18 hours of dry time the sheens were almost identical so it looks like we lucked out with that too  (I could see a slight different when I put my head down on the ground and the sun was shining directly on the seam but I'm not really worried about people doing that and there will be cabinets covering about half the seam). In fact, I'm actually happier knowing we have the heavier duty poly in the kitchen since even with only three of us, the kitchen will certainly be a high traffic area. (Here's a post he did on floor staining back in January.)

Here they are in all their glory: We can finally take a progress shot from the same angle now that the drop cloth wall we had up has been taken down.

And here is it today!

After letting them sit a few days to make sure they were fully dry, we were able to paint. And you might notice that we also have a a few new shiny appliances now.  We're already been enjoying the new fridge for a few days and the dishwasher (off-camera to the right) is making a nice makeshift table for the time being. The stove was delivered Saturday and next week the plumber is coming to install the propane line.

I really feel like we're on the downward slope of our project now that the floors are done. The window and the floors were the two biggest question marks in our planning and neither of us had any experience installing windows or floors but now that they are done, the room looks like a room again and I can actually visualize my kitchen. I'm excited! I'll be even more excited when I finish de-dusting my house*  but still, I'm excited!

*Even with the drop cloth wall, the dust got everywhere. Lucy and I have spent the last two days dusting, sweeping and wiping down walls. The amount we get each time we sweep up is diminishing so another day or two of cleaning and we should be back to normal.