Hit the Floor!

This is a very long story. Before we renovated this house, the back porch was horrible and covered in carpet. When we started the renovation, one of the first things to be done was to tear up the back porch so we could fix the foundation of the kitchen and porch. With the porch torn off, the area easily turned into a midden. For a long time, it looked like this:

 

Oy vey! Then there was a very dark day where my dear friend Sara passed away. Suddenly we needed to host a wake for 100 people with 24 hours notice. The husband managed to cobble together a porch floor and a set of porch steps in record time. The guests smoked and drank the night away on the "temporary" floor. Somehow, three years later we were still sitting around on the "temporary" floor. Here's a pic of ladies' night on the old plywood.

 

It even looked pretty nice for a while, but it was just plywood.

Finally, we saved up and bought some beautiful tongue and groove flooring. It was time to get it on the house! As the preggo, I didn't do a lot of work on this one. As always, it wouldn't have gotten done without the help of all of our unbelievably helpful and amazing friends.

First step, lovingly prime every single board on both sides. This took most of the day on a Saturday.  We managed to get a little night crew action going on, where we actually put down the floor.

The best part about tongue-in-groove is the fasteners are completely hidden. I tried to take some how-to pics. First, drill a pilot hole, at a roughly 45 degree angle through the tongue, positioned over the stud.

 

The nails go in to the tongue at a 45 degree angle over the stud.

Then the husband uses a nail set (a pointy thing that drives the nail in flush) to drive the nail in flush (duh) and then it's ready for the next board to slide over.

Ta-da! The husband uses a hammer block to fit the next board on, and the process repeats.

The scene looked like this for most of the night:

Our friends are the best!

In the morning, we had this!

 

Yippee! It's not a great picture, but with a little styling afterwards:

Be still, my heart! We couldn't put the porch floor down this summer because we were too busy sitting on it, so I can't WAIT for our first spring cocktail hour out there when the weather warms up. Check out that list!

• Finish stripping front window
• Finish trim in bedroom
• Paint trim in bedroom
• Finish unfinished side in pass-through
• Do something with the nasty floor in pass-through
• Make dining room functional
• Get porch floor down
• Paint the house
• Make curtains for bedroom and bedroom door
• Touch up paint in kitchen and bedroom