Leslie and David's Wanderings: 7-14 December We Have Floors (mostly)!

This week, David was in Albuquerque for work most of the week. While he was gone, they finished the tile work in the guest bath but apparently ran out of material to finish the master bath and powder room. They laid the Engineered Vinyl Plank (EVP)down in most of the house but ran out of planks and underlayment before they finished and stopped work. But they did finally cut those two bolts sticking out of the concrete off before they laid the EVP over them! Leslie met our realtor, Laurie, at the house and they went over all the paint colors that have to be selected. For all the cabinets, walls, trim, doors, etc. On Friday, David went out to the house and met the installer for the mantle. We selected a 135 year old hand hewn barn beam from a local barn with some hand cut mortises. The beam is white oak and extremely dry and hard. They sent one small guy, Evan, to do the install. There was no way he was going to lift that beam by himself. So, David spent 6 hours helping Evan cut, fit and mount the mantle in place. The wood was extremely hard and the cuts had to be done with multiple shallow passes or the saw would bog down and stop. Evan spent quite a bit of time trimming the side pieces so they would fit very tightly. Imagine taking a hard old bent and twisted beam and try to mount it square and level with an unlevel stone ledge and unsquared walls. But Evan is a pro. It turned out beautiful! On Saturday, we picked up some electrical conduit and ran the data cable from the house to the shop through them. Unfortunately, David realized the last straight pipe was too long to make the corner after he had already glued it in place. He tried to cut it with the circular saw while holding the wires out of the way. But caught three of the four cables with the saw and cut them. Now he will need to spend a few hours splicing tiny Ethernet cables together before we can finish the job and fill in the trench. We were sooo close to finishing!