Sleeping in My Room

Do you know how awesome it feels to sleep in your own room after living out of your guest room for over 2 months? You must - you're all housebloggers.

I think it was the most restful sleep I've had in a long time. But that could also be because I was exhausted!

Let me rewind a little.

Having to work last Sunday - I decided early on last week that Saturday was do-or-die-day for the wood floors upstairs. I was determined to sleep in my own room again. The problem - the banister... or lack thereof.

The banister landing posts has to be recessed and attached to the floor joists - not just the hard wood, so we knew we had to get them before anything could be accomplished. Now, if you haven't had a stair experience - I'd highly recommend it. Stairs are complicated, confusing, mathematical, expensive, and usually, very necessary. Ours are even more so because they lead into an upstairs room with a railing that theoretically should tie into the stair banister. And we have an unusually tall last step. (at the top that is)

Ok - so we were completely in the dark about how to work the banister. Over rail, between post, wood, iron, lose it into the ceiling, lose some tread space, tie it into the upstairs railing, how to tie in the railing with the hardwood floor...

We were confused enough about how to make it work - never mind making it look good. That was a complete enigma.

So Friday Mike went over to TJ's house (carpenter/contractor extrodinaire) to ask his advice. Together they came up with a plan, and Saturday Mike and I set about putting it into action.

THE PLAN

Step1: We drove over to TJ's early in the AM with some of our hardwood pieces for him to cut and router. Cutting off the tongue & groove portion would leave us with a smooth edge to edge the stair hole with.

Step2: We picked up landing posts. We decided to go with a post to post system rather than over rail because it would be easier for us. (Long story about this to follow)

Step3: We picked up some oak boards to trim around the landing posts.

And there's more to this plan, but that's all we could afford to get at the time because we had to rent the hardwood stapler again too.

With all these errands, we couldn't start flooring until around 3 or 4pm. So, naturally, we were up till midnight flooring. And I had to get up at 5am for my shoot. Lovely. But it wasn't so bad - our neighbor's son came over and helped out. It went pretty quick once we got started. And here are the results:

Here's where the railing will be. With two oak landing posts, the oak board surrounding them, and next to the board, you can see a piece of wood flooring that goes in the opposite direction to the rest of the floor. That's so the tongues of the horizontal boards snap in and hold tight.

Here's the other side of the room. We stained the baseboard trim last night and haven't put it up yet.

Awe behold the beauty.

Having just barely finished the floor on Saturday night, we were in no condition to move furniture. And Sunday, I was exhausted from work.

Last night I didn't even think it was going to happen! Mike and I cut and stained the baseboard trim and the landing posts. And after that, I was ready to quit for the night. But as we were bringing laundry upstairs, Mike just decided that we should sleep in the bedroom that night. And we started moving stuff!

Around 11, we had all the office stuff back in the office - although not arranged. We just threw it all in there. And we had the bed and nightstands in the bedroom. Messy as everything still was, I was so happy to see it in place.