Not afraid any more

I've written about fear before, I believe. Well, this post is about a different kind of fear.

The fear...




....of....





....installing hard wood floors!!! [insert scary music here]

Not too bad, huh? We're using a pre-finished floor, so all that's required is nailing it in, and cutting to size when necessary. But still, this is something neither Matt nor I have ever done before, and for some reason I had the idea that this was going to be a very time-consuming, finicky sort of project.

Turns out it's not.

Dan (our framer's assistant last summer) finally had time to stop by this morning and give Matt a few pointers. He was only here for half an hour or so, but enough to give Matt a few hints and tricks to make things run smoothly, work out a detail with the stair stringer, and help him strategize a starting location. This afternoon Matt got a great start on it (about 1/3 of what you see there) and then after everyone was in bed I went out with him and helped by laying out pieces for him and cutting at the ends of the rows so all he had to do was use the nailer, and we ended up with half of the larger room done! Lots of fun to do, and not nearly as hard as I'd been afraid it was going to be.

And, though I can't quite cross it off The List, "install washer and dryer" got one big step closer today as they were delivered this morning.

As part of getting ready for that, Matt installed a few pieces of the base trim in the laundry room, which you can see here. Apparently the person who helped him place the order forgot the piece that allows the washer and dryer to stack, so he'll have to remedy that, but that will fit easily in our cargo-Neon.