Finishing the living, dining room, study ...

Installing the flooring, painting, insulating around the windows, baseboards and trim around the windows, hanging doors and hardware, and last minute things to complete before our first Christmas in the house. We didn't put a Christmas tree up last year at the apartment we had rented in Exeter and we had dubbed it, "The Hovel." :-)

As you might have observed from the pictures of the kitchen outside the bay window it was snowing and Christmas was coming up very fast and we still had lots to do before I could put up our tree.

We bought the cork flooring for the kitchen from Home Depot. Chosing 'cork' for the kitchen flooring was based on ease of maintenance, resistance to heat and spillage, durability, and because many tasks have to be done while standing, it had to be kind to feet. Cork failed on heat resistance, but excelled on all the other variables. The type we installed was tongue and groove panels 1' wide x 3' long with a clear, acrylic finish. It also provides a sound barrier; its soft, warm, dependent on what pattern is choosen, it can look like burled wood or have a freckled appearance, and it's very easy to install. It took us an afternoon to lay.

For our entrance foyer, we chose greenish, ceramic tile and that took a little longer, but that too is simple if you have the right tools. The place where we buy our tile lets us rent the equipment for the weekend.

Between the foyer and the kitchen, Haydn custom made cherry wood flooring. He milled the Cherry on his planer to the width and thickness he needed just as he had milled the Hickory for making the kitchen cupboards. That flooring took Haydn several days for him to lay (having bad knees made the job much harder for him) and several more for me to apply the number of coats of varnish required. Each day I'd put another coat on in the morning and by the time Haydn arrived home from work, he was able to cross it without leaving marks in it.

We had set up a routine for varnishing the Hickory trim for the doors and windows. He'd tell me what he needed varnished and I had the basement (where there wasn't furniture that I had to work around) to lay the pieces on horses set up to elevate it for drying. We used Siken's, clear marine varnish that is very durable and doesn't yellow over time. Siken's cannot be put on thickly; several coats applied thinly works best and it dries to a very hard finish. We used that varnish on the cherry flooring, the kitchen cupboards, the walnut and cherry stairs, and all the wood trim in the house.

All the interior, closet and laundry room bi-fold doors had to be painted, jams installed, doors fitted, and hardware added, total ten. Windows had to be caulked before trim was put around them.

We called professionals to lay the carpeting for the living, dining room and study. As December 2002, came upon us, we were down to installing curtain rods, minor filling and finally getting the rest of our furniture out of the basement and placed in the rooms. Several nights we were able to sit around our wood-burning fireplace and plan our first Boxing Day vacation -- we decided to take a well-deserved holiday in our RV to the United States. I bought Haydn a digital compass for it and we treated 'Marta', our RV, to a new set of hubcaps.

Pictures of where we were December 2002: