Goodbye Old Floor

Today was a little bit of a mis-match of work, at least for me. R was in the kitchen removing the last pieces of old plywood while I sanded the walls (still! It's never-ending!). However, I didn't last very long. I have asthma and the dust from sanding from the dust being kicked up from the plywood and the saw R was using were starting to really bother me. I went outside to get some fresh air and ended up working on my sidewalk some more.

Yes. I'm still not done. I had a good rhythm going when I first started, but then the kitchen schedule took over and I wasn't able to dedicate an entire weekend to the sidewalk anymore. My dad came a couple weeks ago to help me dig out the area between the lean-to and garage, but then it rained one weekend, then it was a rare humid October day... you get the picture.

This afternoon I was able to get around the corner and past the rock that was giving us a problem (this whole area was filled with buried rocks and buried broken dishes and cups... however, this rock, it turned out, was supporting some of the random rocks that are helping to hold up our lean-to. We're planning on tearing down the lean-to, putting in an actual foundation and rebuilding it next summer). At first I was thinking I'd just go around it for now and next year when we took apart the lean-to, I'd put in the missing bricks. But now I really like how it looks and am considering doing it in a couple other places as well :)

Then I ran out of bricks. Oh well.. until next weekend...

While I was doing all of this, R made good progress in the kitchen. You'll remember that we did half of the plywood last Sunday, and this weekend we did the cabinet side of the kitchen. It was not as easy as the other side (hence it taking almost 2 days). The sub-floor on this side of the kitchen wasn't the old, original flooring.. maybe it had too much water damage or something, but it looks like it was removed around the 50's (helping to solidify our idea that that was when the last major work was done on the house) and "new" 6" boards were put in its place.

Another issue he was having was under the cabinets. He couldn't get the saw in all the way, so we still have old plywood for about 3" under the toe-kick.. and we also left it under the dishwasher (technically it's new there because we had to replace it last fall) and under the stove. Also, because we ran out of time and weren't able to get the new plywood down, our stove was left out in the middle of the kitchen... which means tonight was the first night of a week of take-out (tonight it was pizza. We tried a new place... it wasn't that good).