A firry predicament

Last night we had wine & cheese (homemade cheese!) by the fire that we lit in our beautiful fireplace. The dogs played around in the house and yard. Chaps was more confident in the new place than Buster at first, but by the time they left, they both seemed to be loving it.

We started by ripping up the carpet in the bedroom and sanding off the paint. Luckily, the paint came off in no time at all and didn't gum up in the slightest. However, we did discover that the floors were fir, not oak as we had originally though. Bummer. So, we decided that in order to see if we needed them professionally refinished rather than doing it ourselves, since fir is much more suceptible to damage, gaps and staining, that we would rip out all of the carpet and check it out.

Jason took the dogs back to the duplex and came back with Gatorade, a far more preferable drink when you are in "sweat equity" mode.

Then as we were starting the carpet removal in the living room, we noticed the planks were smaller widths .... could it be? .... is it possible? .... could they be OAK?


Jason RAN and grabbed the sander, and sanded off a bit, and YAY!!!!! The living room floors are OAK!!! Woo hoo!!! We had checked the end grain where the registers were before we bought the place and could see the end grain, which looked like oak, but when we saw the bedroom, I think both of us were a bit disheartened. This gave both of us a second wind, knowing there were beautiful oak floors in the room we bought the house for :) I think Jason was more happy knowing that he hadn't misidentified the wood.

We later mapped out the electrical, and we aren't sure yet. It seems like all of the outlets on the main floor are still knob & tube. The entire top floor and basement are all grounded outlets, so that's good. There is one grounded outlet on the floor and it's dedicated, and luckily it is right where we want the fridge to go.

However, there are only 2 circuits running on that floor, and both are pretty full, and we're trying to figure out if there are any more circuits available out of the breaker box. To be up to code, we have to add 10 or so outlets total in the living room and kitchen. Jason's now running around the duplex calculating loads of the electronics and appliances that we're moving over.

He needs my help, so I gotta go--more later!