Relaying hardwoods in the bedroom

6 days later...

Auditing my time to become more efficient

I decided to evaluate my time and over the course of a month, I noted all my renovation activities on a calendar. In a way, it was an audit of my time spent working on the house.

What I discovered, was that I was dedicating roughly 2 hours each night to setup and cleanup. Indeed, one of the most time consuming tasks has been the time it takes to lug out and set up the tools.

What if I could dedicate those 2 hours to making actual progress on the house?
What steps must I take to accomplish this?

The solution was simple.

I needed a dedicated workspace where all my tools were set up and ready to use on demand. The workspace needed to be easy to clean so that dust wouldn't escape into the house.

But where? The smurf room. That blue room that had yet to find a dedicated purpose. Better yet, the floors in it were trashed by cellar fungus. Half of them were already missing, a quarter unsalvageable, and 1/4 still viable. I decided to use the floors from this room to patch the hallway and bedroom floors.  In order to cover up the exposed subfloor, I'd need to take the vinyl flooring from the bedroom.

To keep myself on track, I made a list of tasks:

1. Remove the hardwoods from the smurf room
2. Treat the subfloor with fungicide. Let it dry. Plane it flat.
3. Pull all the nails out of the woods, treat them with fungicide, and trim off the bad parts.
4. Remove the vinyl flooring from the bedroom (layer #1)
5. Reinstall it in the smurf room.
6. Set up the workshop (in the smurf room)
7. Remove layer #2 sticky tiles and plywood floors from the bedroom
8. Scrape the bedroom floors of layer #3 - sheet linoleum.
9. Remove layer #4 - the bedroom hardwoods, 
10. which requires demo'ing out the corner TV hutch and all the baseboards.
11. Finish removing the bedroom hardwoods,
12. Treat the subfloor with fungicide, let it dry, then plane it flat.
13. Pull all the nails out of the woods, treat them with fungicide, and trim off the bad parts.
14. Cut subfloor away from where it touches the chimney masonry to prevent future wood destroying fungi
15. Reinstall hardwoods in the bedroom, patching it with the salvaged woods from the smurf room
16. Finish installing remaining scraps in hallway and, with some luck, the kitchen too.
17. Have a really stiff drink. 

Currently I'm on step #11, which means the new workshop in the smurf room is all set up!!!

Get fit

A good back workout:

Pull up and lug around 14' long pieces of pine flooring. Repeat for 2 rooms.

GOOOAAAALLL!

$60 on Craigslist. What a steal!
As if that's not incredible enough, it came with all the accessories, blade and a herculift mobile base too!

Cellar fungus

The growths shown are the mycelium, which transport nutrients to the fungus as it grows. They can get very large—large enough to pull off like a piece of string. It typically presents in woods that are in a damp environment. In my hardwood floors, the dampness originated where the subfloor touched a concrete porch foundation. It spread to the hardwoods and is currently sporing under the house.

As the fungus grows, it causes the interior of the wood to decay, although the top will appear fine until the condition worsens. 

You can use a DIY mixture of white vinegar and borax to scrub it, which has anti-fungal properties, though it is not a cure-all. This stuff is really neat looking when it spores. 

Creepy stuff.

Tweezerman

I used to have a pair of Tweezerman needle-nose tweezers around. Pretty sure my best friend Renee slyly trotted off with them.

They sure would come in handy right now to get these splinters out of my hand.