Wisp naps on her dogs, to keep warmAlright, so it might be a little chilly in the house, but just as I feared, May arrived and brought with it the April we ought to have had, complete with chilly temperatures, rain showers and scuttling clouds. I might have to turn the heat back on, and they aren't even selling firewood anymore in the stores.
What's up with that? It's never cold in the summer? Yeah, right.
Not that we don't have firewood. We have a large pile of very large pieces of aged oak. The problem is splitting them so they can burn properly in our little wood-burning stove.
Never mind. I promised myself I wouldn't tell too much intimate stuff here, and his cutting of the wood might just take us into that territory. My husband trusts me.
So, it's been awhile. Yup. I have been contemplating fiction. Real writing. A place for the stuff that gets in the way of writing here, where it doesn't belong. When that happens, I can't write anything. Been busy, too, laying the solid oak floor in the "petit salon", and feeling pretty proud of ourselves, if I don't say so. It has come out quite well.
Today, I ordered the oak threshold from the wood shop and stained the floor. The guy at the wood shop looked a little dubious. I don't blame him. You see, it turns out that the new slab and our oak floor are perfectly horizontal, but the terracotta tile floor in the entry is... not.
Not even close.
I noticed this before we laid the floor, but there was nothing to do about it then. Something has to be horizontal around here, and I wasn't about to try to plane the sleepers to make the wood floor meet the terracotta floor along the length of the door to the room, while managing to keep the tongue and groove flooring lined up and even. You see, at one corner of the door, the slab is 6 cm below the adjacent finished floor, while at the center point it is 5.5 cm, and at the other end it is 5 cm. The threshold will align with the floor at one end, and then stick up past it by more and more until it hits a centimeter of difference near the small end stair case.
Not good.
I asked the guy to make me a threshold that is 23 mm thick, like the flooring, but which is planed so that along one side it goes from 23 mm to 13 mm, while respecting the 23 mm at the other three perimeters.
He said he'd do his best. I am choosing to feel very hopeful.
The assistant asked when I'd like it. I hoped to look very hopeful and humble, while communicating my sense of urgency.
"C'est urgent, non?" she suggested.
"Oui, si possible," I said, nodding my head. She wrote "Urgent" at the bottom of the order.
I do need it to move the piano in more easily, although it would be a dream come true not to have the piano until the sheetrock is in place. We could lay the 120 cm x 300 cm sheets flat on the paper-covered finished floor, then lay down plywood as a cutting surface and prepare it in there, rather than have to do that in the living room and carry them in. But, I don't want to ask too much of Monsieur.
The two old carp and the new carp and shubunkin are still missing.
I am not pleased.
....
Articles
3 commentaires:
Looking great there, Jackie! Matching stains on new and old floors is an undertaking but you know what you're doing. I particularly liked the cutline about the romantic evening by the work lamp. (Ton mari la?) I have spent many of those on this old (and new) house. I was stranded at home by flood water yesterday. I started measuring, planing for the pergola over the slab. I'm thinking the joists of the pergola should be pitched rather than horizontal to complement the slope of the shed-roofed kitchen/utility/bath addition. The summer months we might want to put a sun blocking mesh or canvas over those ribs. Your petit salon is going to be a nice space. Je vais prendre une sieste de puissance avant le boulot. A bientot...
Merci, F.M., mais tu me fais un compliment qui n'est pas franchement mérité! Indeed, "matching" stains is an undertaking, and I am not sure anyone knows enough about what they are doing to undertake it!
C'est bien mon mari. Chute! Ne le dis pas aux autres. Non, je plaisante. It's rare that we work together on a project, since I am most unpleasant with which to work, but we did it on this one, and we did it admirably well. I was delightful.
If you pitch your roof joists, will you wind up too low on the driveway side, or is it pitching alongside the drive? Anyway, will you set it below the main roof and keep the same pitch? Make it a continuation of the main roof? Or, break the pitch at the main roof?
I think the idea of covering it with a fabric that lets light through in the summer, but protects from direct light is a nice one.
I am dying to make a pergola (grape arbor) out of branches, but I'm not sure that will happen on this property. The place I wanted to do it was down where the shelter for the motorcycles and the wooden boat mon mari wants to refurbish and make sea worthy, and if I do, it will more likely be part of that structure.
Hope its drying out there by Overall Creek.
Bonne sieste.
The joists will pitch running parallel to the driveway, starting 3 to 4 feet above the kitchen porch roof eave, and drop perhaps two feet out to the edge of the slab. This evening I'll post a photo of a sloping pergola (I suppose that's the correct name) that I built on the back of the 2nd story deck and was originally covered in lattice with jasmine all over it. Honeysuckle eventually took over due to neglect on our part. I finally ripped all that out and it now houses the spa. Alors, now you have wall work to do in the petit salon. One step closer... Au boulot!
Enregistrer un commentaire