I'm Floored!

It's been awhile since I've been able to sit down and edit pictures and create a blog post.  We have been busier than ever out at the house and there's literally been no time for updates.  I find myself with an hour or so this morning before I head out to the furniture stores in search of the elusive "perfect couch" for the great room.  Is there really such a thing?

Our grandson enjoying perfect evening at the little river house.

So let's catch up.   Last post, we were facing a big set back with setting the tile floors ourselves.  Taun, our tile setter who is doing the two showers, was able to chip away all the bad work we did and put a new underlayment down.  After he did that for us, we decided to press onward and do the rest ourselves.  There was a 15x15 utility room, a mudroom and a fairly large hall bathroom off of the mudroom that all had to be done.  

I started in the utility room and... oh my lanta! I was so sore, I really didn't think I could go another day.  Now I know tile setters earn every dollar they charge.  What back breaking, arthritic hand inducing, sweat dripping work it is.  But we kept at it.  Mike cut tiles and I mixed thinset and placed each and every tile.  We used a 4x8 porcelain tile that looks like old distressed brick. It's the Chicago Brick line and the color is Chelsea.

 

Mudroom

I really love the look and it will be so durable and easy to clean in the high traffic areas.

Ready to place the final two tiles

It took us four days to lay the tile and then little did I realize but the hard work began.  

The utility room

Grouting..ugh!  It was not hard, it just took a lot of wringing out of sponges and mixing small batches of grout, so it would't go off before we'd used it up and making sure it got into every crack. In total, it was a 5 full days to complete the project.  I'm glad that it's done and it's beautiful!  (PS- I never say never but I'll never lay that much tile again!)


Sons, Scott and Cade, popped in and out over the last few weeks.  Scott was in town to finish up his private pilots license and they met up to fly over to a business meeting in Seattle. It was so nice to have Scott around to help Mike with the barn wood siding and just nice to have him around!

Mike and Scott 

The stone mason, John, was able to get all of the rock done outside and also to completely finish the fireplace.  It looks just like we'd envisioned it.  He's a very talented guy.


Speaking of talented guys, our friend John and his son, Scott have completely custom built our cabinets in the kitchen, great room, utility room and master bedroom.  That's a lot of cabinets!  They have been setting them in place, adding the doors and trimming them out off and on all week.  

They are almost finished and they outdid themselves.  

We are so lucky to have good friends who are so talented.




With the finish carpenters wanting to come in this week and finish baseboards, we were really on a push to get not only the tile flooring done, but ALL of the flooring done. 
 
Mike and his brother, Pat have been doing the wood floors.  They are finally finished and Mike has just a few more planks of the LVP (luxury vinyl planks) to put down in our master bath.

We picked out two slabs of granite that will be installed at the end of the week.  I'm really nervous about how it will go with everything.  Pretty wild and crazy!


The tile work is continuing in the master shower and the guest shower.  Picture next time.
Also, the black top was poured for the circle driveway and over to the barn.  Picture next time.

And finally, we moved everything out of the storage unit thanks to the big muscles of this motley moving crew!  A big thanks to our wonderful family, some of who aren't in this picture, who always manage to come to the rescue when they get that urgent, last minute shout out for help.