Road to Emmaus: Paint and Flooring

This past week or two has seen a lot of progress on the finish work inside the cabin. Once the drywall joints had been taped and mudded, I sanded lightly and wiped the walls down to try and remove any dust. Most walls these days are textured in some way, but I elected to go with smooth surface, for two main reasons. First, I didn't want the extra time and cost associated with texturing. Second, smooth walls are generally easier to patch than textured walls if you get holes in them, as you don't have to try to find a way to match whatever texture was used at the time of construction. The drawback to smooth surface is you have to be more precise in your plastering/sanding, and you have to live with the inevitable little defects you won't see until painting is done.

We went with a very light yellow color for paint and are pretty happy with how it looks. We wanted a color that was fairly light, but didn't want an off white or gray color. We'll see how it holds up to traffic and wood heat.

One other project I did once the walls were plastered was to put the box around the chimney. I have to keep at least a 2 inch clearance from the sides of my chimney (clearances are determined by manufacturer, and because we went with a triple wall chimney, the clearances were quite low), so measured and build the pieces and screwed them in to place. Once the paint was done, I began adding car siding to the exterior. I decided to go with car siding over sheetrock because 1. I was sick of hanging sheetrock and plastering, 2. I thought the wall could use a little more wood, and 3. I thought wood would be more durable than sheetrock with the kids.

Once the painting was done, I rented a commercial floor sander after work one day and sanded until well in to the morning, starting with 20 grit and moving up to 100 grit. The floor for the loft (and what is the ceiling from the first floor) is spruce, as it is a more dense grain and harder than other pines. The flooring is 1 1/2 (closer to 1 1/4" after milling) tongue and groove and is not designed to ever be entirely smooth like most hardwood floors. My purpose in sanding was to get down all the dirt and dust that had been accumulated during construction, and to try to soften down some of the joints so you don't stub your toes on it. Because I heat with wood, my floors will shrink and move quite a bit in the winter as compared to the summer, when the humidity rises again. It's important to understand the strengths and limitations of your material.

I also had to decide what to do with floors for the main level, which was simply OSB decking. The original hope was to put down hardwood flooring, such as hickory, but decided not to for a few reasons. First, though I can get the flooring for $2.00 to $2.50 /sq. ft. from the local Amish, there are still quite a few additional costs to get the sander (probably a $150-200 investment for the size of my floors), the sealer (another $150-200), and the time associated with getting the floor acclimated, sanded, and sealed. Once I knew I wasn't going to put in the hardwoods right away, I had to decide whether to try and paint the floors for now, or put down something like laminate. I went with laminate for 3 main reasons. First, I quickly realized that the subfloor was not going to work for painting, as it pieces would flake too much from having gotten rained on in the construction phase. Second, I was concerned the appraiser would raise a fuss when it came time for the final bank appraisal to convert from a building loan to the a traditional mortgage. Third, I found the laminate I liked for about $1.00/ft. square, and it goes down quickly and looks very nice when it's done.

This week we'll start putting up the trim and finishing the floors. I'm hoping to get all the inside work done so I can get the final inspection and then, once we start to move in, I can finish some of the outside work, such as deck spindles and insulation underneath the cabin.