Last Saturday, Rich and I set aside a day to simply do nothing (or very little). For the past few weekends, we’ve been working on our Kirkland house, which is slowly shaping up. After painting every room twice to cover up the stunning pink, avocado green, and neon blue walls, we started to prep the floors to lay strand bamboo. Happily Rich had an epiphany and decided to sand the original construction floor boards instead of cover them with thin sheets of very expensive plywood.
The floors where sanded within a day. We finished getting them ready by using a hand sander along with getting on our hands and knees to remove, scrap, sweep, and vacuum up staples, bits of paint, ceiling goo, and other imperfections that could potentially prevent the bamboo flooring from laying flat.
On Thanksgiving, we started to lay the bamboo. Rich, using his CAD skills, laid out the boards to minimize waste. He then cut them using his "pattern" while I prepared the Thanksgiving feast. After gobbling shrimp-stuff tomatoes on greens, turkey, dressing (rosemary bread, leeks, onions, celery, dried cranberries, pecan), yams with two types of apples, red potatoes mashed with garlic, gravy, and broccoli with leeks and carrots, Rich measured out the depth of seven boards then used a trowel to spread thick, goopy glue in the measured-out the area. Afterwards, we began to lay out the boards according to Rich’s pattern.
We then used our hands to squish the boards tightly together and tape them. We also rented a 100-pound roller thingy, which we rolled over the floor. Once a section was done, we started on the next. It took until 10:00 p.m. to finish the master bedroom floor. Fortunately, we had vanilla ice cream and warm blueberry crunch to give us strength.
On Friday, we continued our floor-laying efforts and happily finished Rich’s office. This weekend, we’ll lay flooring in the other two bedrooms, which leaves the tricky hallway, living room, dining room, and stairs to do. Groan.
After having our fourth meal of turkey, we drove to Mount Vernon on Friday evening. Saturday morning, it was a treat to wake up next to Rich with the "beasts." Zephyra and Jujube climbed up the covers at the foot of the bed and nibbled on our toes. Ouch! Pu’Yi bumped us with his head, and when we didn’t’ pay attention, kneaded up with his paws. Ouch! Ariel and Lunetta also demanded attention in their subtle ways.
Along with visiting our lot on Anacortes and cutting down a Christmas tree (it was growing in the area where we want to plant fruit trees), we had lunch at my favorite place, Geri-A-Deli in downtown Anacortes, bought a new washer and dryer at Sears, got Jelly-Bellys, Zip-Frizz and other necessities at Costco, had ice cream at Diary Queen, watched a video, looked at photos on Rich’s computer… and had a great Saturday.
Sunday, work resumed on our house in Kirkland, but at least we’re making progress and I’ll be able to move into the house in early December after my apartment lease expires.
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