Totally Floored

I know we've not had many updates lately which is ironic because so much has been happening.  We have
had another switch-a-roo with the builder (yet another GC to manage the completion of the project).  And they have acknowledged that they could do a better job.  And finally, the actions are starting to back up the words.

Our target closing date is approaching fast and there is a lot of work left to do, and many problems that remain unsolved.  But they are tackling them all and that's all we ask.

So what should we discuss first...how about the upstairs flooring?

While we have had a firm vision for most of the house the upstairs flooring has always been a wildcard.  We kept our minds open to all options right up to the moment we had to decide.  The house is clean and simple downstairs without any soft surfaces so we considered putting in Sisal or carpet on the 2nd floor just to give us some new textures.  For a long time we were thinking of hardwood in the hallway and then using bright pops of color in each bedroom carpet.  After some investigation we were surprised how much carpet was and figured for the $$ we may as well just put in wood flooring.

We settled on a 5/8" strand woven Bamboo in a Ultra-low VOC finish.  The coloring is great - it's gray.  And the other thing that is nice is it's a click-lock application which chopped time and money off the install.

The upstairs flooring was another element of the house that was our responsibility which meant we had to get it delivered, in the house to acclimate, and then installed.  And this proved to be another character building exercise.  We ordered the bamboo from a warehouse in California so it was sent by LTL truck on a 5 day journey.  While this truck was bounding down the interstates towards Austin, Mother Nature decided after 2 years of hardly any rain, to let it rip.  It poured for 2 days.

Hard Rain.

Noah's ark kind of rain.

And when it stopped we had a 800' driveway more suited for mud bog racing than a tractor trailer.  If the truck tried to make it to the garage it would have never made it back out.  The next complication was the trailer showed up with 2500 lbs of bamboo on two pallets and didn't have a lift gate to get it off the truck.  By the way, I was at the office and Roberta was handling the delivery.  She was able to coerce the driver and a trim carpenter to unload it one box at a time and place it on the side of the road.  Then she called the company we hired to install the floor and asked them to bring a truck and  haul the wood in the house - best $50 we have spent to date.

A few days later I cracked open some boxes to check out the boards and they looked great.  The transition pieces were a little beat up and had color variations but it wasn't going to slow us down.

The installers had everything in place in just one day.  We're happy with the results.  Will post more pictures when everything is cleaned up.

One last comment.  Stranded bamboo is hard stuff.  We have horizontal bamboo in our current home and it doesn't take much to leave a mark.  The stranded bamboo we just installed will fold a nail in half if you try to pound it in!  Can you say 'Kid Resistant'?

Thanks for stopping by.

Tile

Still here.  Just busy.  Onward with the story...

Our builder's tile options weren't ringing our bell so we opted to purchase and supply the tile and grout ourselves.  We are only putting tile in the bathrooms so the task wasn't overwhelming. We wanted something contemporary in the master, and a good mix of modern and fun for the kids bath.  Let's begin in the master bath.

We are installing a walk in shower without a door enclosure. The shower area is "L" shaped which requires a custom built floor pan.  This involved creating a fiberglass shell and then covering it with concrete so it can accept the tile.

After the bathroom floor was covered with cement board the tile started going in.  We went with 12 x 24" smooth tile for both the floor and the shower wall.  Dark gray for the floor and light gray for the shower walls. Since this involved looking at color and shape options I will spare you, dear reader, from that drama.  For the floor of the shower, and inside the wall niches, we used dark gray penny tile.  We are quite happy with the results so far.

We chose and old-timey hexagon tile for the kids floor, with big ol' white subway tiles in the shower and for the sink backsplash.  We used penny in the knock outs.

I don't have any shots of the subway in the kids shower so I'll include that in a future post.

More to come.  Thanks for stopping by.