Finished Floors

After three weeks of labor, the floors in the rear of the house are finally finished. Progress was much slower because the floor guy was also sanding and white-washing the beams, which he could not do at the same time as the floors. Also, the first try at getting the right color on the floors didn't work out, and he ended up having to sand it all out and start from scratch. Thankfully, the results look pretty nice, and are a fairly close match to the original wood in the front half of the house.

This week there should be plenty of activity; in the front of the house, the floor guy will be patching up and sanding our stairs and banister. Meanwhile, the rear of the house will get a new treatment for the window and door, along with the appliances and some carpentry.

Wood, wood, wood

The new hardwood floors are being laid down in the rear of the house, and when finished will match the cut and color of all the existing hardwood. Since we want them to conform to the more modern aesthetic in that area, we are purposefully omitting the traditional 5-plank border found in our other rooms in favor of just a clean, straight lie the whole way through. We are running them across the room (N-S) and not parallel to the hall both to make less obvious the places where the floor is not perfectly level (it is an old house, after all), and to further mark the transition from the hallway into a new space.

At the same time, we have plenty more wood to finish. There will be two decorative posts framing the large exposed beam, providing a complete definition of the structure. We're planning on whitewashing all of the exposed beams and posts to keep some of their natural grain while preventing their presence from being heavy and overbearing.

The wall between the kitchen and the rear wall will be covered with horizontal planks of the lath that we pulled from inside our walls during the demolition, a celebration of the original construction.

And yes, our temporary island countertop will be wood as well - plywood! I guess you could call that "builder grade." We thought of using other surfaces like butcher block or stainless steel, but it's surprising how expensive those get when you need 30 square feet of them. The 3/4" thick plywood will be sanded nicely and treated with a food-safe sealer (BioShield Herbal Oil #2), and as a bonus will serve as the mounting surface for the stone we will eventually install.

Walls of Glass

Our 800 lb. window returned yesterday, and this time it survived long enough to be put in place. It's about 50 square feet of 3/4" thick tempered glass, and the installers usually insist on using a crane for this kind of job. But it's not easy to get a crane to the site, with the lack of open level ground near the backyard, so manual labor carried the day.

It was a heroic effort. Several guys hoisted the pane, in a coordinated fashion, through the narrow gap between the house and the scaffolding that had been set up to support them as they put it into place. By comparison, the 500 lb. doors were "easy" because they could just be lifted through the large opening.

Happily, both installations were a success and the house is now considerably less drafty as a result.

The door is a Fleetwood Norwood 3070-EX, a system of two 6' wide floor-to-ceiling (9' high) sliding pocket doors. This was one of our splurges. We want to showcase the view and light in the back of the house as much as possible, and the best way to do that is with doors that are almost all glass and that can get completely out of the way. The result will be a seamless blend between indoor and outdoor living, all the better to enjoy the many sunny Potrero Hill days ahead.