Florida VacationHere's Sue at Marc and Trisha's new house in the Silver lake subdivision of the Suntree development north of Melbourne, Florida. My youngest sister, Trish, asked us down to renovate their new house before they moved in. We knew it involved putting wood floors down in a number of rooms and tiling the master bath. Scroll down to see the rest of the story . . .  

We set up our workshop in the garage. And, yes, those are screens that slide closed across the garage opening, but we didn't use them. 

 

We started with the two kid's bedrooms. Trish and Marc bought a nice laminate floor product that snapped together. Here it is going down in Sean's room. 

 

The wide closet with a post had to be delt with, but it was handled rather easily with Sue's help. All the door casings were cutoff with my new Dremel MultiTool. It uses a back and forth vibrating blade that does plunge cuts straight into the wood.  

 

The results were nice. And each cut took only a few seconds.  

 

The hallway by the kid's rooms was already tiled. We got a bullnose molding to do the transition. In Florida they wanted to sell us 'T' molding to do this. But using 'T' over uneven and/or yielding surfaces will mean the 'T' will eventually break. We got the bullnose (so named cuz one face is pretty flat) and some sanded caulk to make the transition. 

 

The bullnose was a little short, so we filled in with some scrap flooring first.  

 

And here is the result. The bullnose overlaps the floating floor and the sanded caulk fills in to the tile. Looks good and will last.  

 

Here's Kaycee's room and her closet. It got the laminate wood too. 

 

Trish also wanted to replace the old wire rack in the closet. Here I'm throwing a level line to put up a new wood shelf and pole.  

 

The new stuff is in and the doors have been reinstalled too. 

 

Kaycee's room was put together as soon as the floor was done. It all looked good here too.  

 

Here's an example of what the house had before. An off white carpet and stained wood baseboards. Everyone agreed that the carpet wouldn't hold up to a couple of teenagers and a dog, but it came as a surprize when I found out that the molding had to go too. Instead of having a large flat side, the old molding's style was similar to a doorway casing. Lacking the large flat area meant we couldn't use standard quarter round moldings (or any other kind either) to cover the gap between the floor and wall. In the end they decided to replace all the baseboard molding in the house. 

 

So we bought 40 twelve foot sections of baseboard molding and hauled it to the house.  

 

Trish and the kids set up shop in the living room and started painting them all. All the rooms except the family room already had its carpet and most tack strips removed when we arrived. Sean and his friend Jones did most of the work. They also removed all the old molding. 

 

First aside; Sue and I were there for sixteen and a half days. We had an afternoon thunderstorm every day but one. And two of them were quite severe.  

 

After seeing the kid's rooms, Trish wasn't too thrilled with using the same product in the rest of the house. The laminate looked great but had a definite bevel on each edge that created a groove between each board. She wanted something flatter that wouldn't capture dust and sand. So fifty five boxes of the old stuff were returned and we picked up a similar amount of a new engineered wood product. The new stuff would have to be glued down. 

 

One corner of the living room was used to hook up the Bright House cable, internet and phone service. I hooked up my traveling wireless router and we had our internet connection. Oh, and one night over at Trish's old house I got her wireless laptop working on their home network. 

 

The outside corner and wall of the living room had a problem. While the floor was flat and level, there were protruding cement blocks along one wall. Some were nearly level with the slab while others stuck up three quarters of an inch.  

 

So I spent an hour or two under a plastic tent in a dust mask with my grinder and flattened it all out. Talk about dust. The tent, three dust masks and a window fan keep it under control. 

 

The end result was suitable for the new flooring.  

 

Here's Trish painting the master bedroom before the flooring went in.  

 

Now on to the master bath. It had been half carpet and half tile.  

 

A two-by-two inch greenish beige tile. After much cussin' and discussin' it was determined that the old tile would go and an all new floor tile would go in.  

 

The Florida room out back had a real pebble surface. It was dirty, so Marc cleaned it up and applied a couple of coats of sealer. 

 

Here's Marc applying the sealer.  

 

And the view of the back yard. Nice. 

 

Sean's closet doors go back up.  

 

Sue and I added blinds to Sean's room.  

 

The only room in its original condition was the family room. Sue and I stayed at the old house until we got Sean's room done. Then we moved his bed into the new room and started sleeping at the new house and using the family room in the evenings.  

 

The entry hall, kitchen, kitchenette, second bath and halls to the kids room were all tiled. In between other tasks, Sue and I put the new baseboard moldings up in these areas. By the way, that's paper on the tile floor for protection.  

 

The new baseboard moldings looked sharp.  

 

Then the new flooring got moved into the master bedroom.  

 

Add glue, a trowel and plenty of tape and you're ready to go.  

 

And we begin.  

 

That was fun. We brought in the light as there are no ceiling light fixtures in the house. And it kind of got dark every afternoon during the daily thunderstorm and deluge.  

 

Sue marked the walls with a stud finder to facilitate nailing up the new baseboards. We stopped at the doorway to transition to the wood in the hall. It was appropriate to use 'T' molding at this doorway. The tape on the floor keeps gaps from opening up until the glue sets. 

 

Remember the little bath tiles? Well, here they be no more. A compressor and air chisel took care of that.  

 

When the tile came up it took most of the surface coat of the cement slab with it.  

 

So it took a layer of self leveling compound to fix it.  

 

Sue applied a latex primer first and the compound went down fairly easily. 

 

Before we started the living and dining areas we had to deal with a step. The living room was 'sunken' so it was a step down from the entry hall and the dining area. Here we plan out the appropriate moldings, bullnose below with stair tread above.  

 

But first the dining room step had to be dealt with. It was very rough. I aimed my laser along the face and all the high points were illimunated.  

 

I used my hammer and chisel until the laser showed it was flat.  

 

The step from the entry had to be delt with too. It had a tile face, like the tile on the floor above. More work with the hammer and chisel and it didn't anymore.  

 

Somewhere during all this it was my birthday. Here's the crew; Sue, Trish, Jim and Marc after a dinner out. Kaycee made my favorite cake. It was very good. 

 

It even had candles. Everyone asked if I felt any different. I told them I felt only half as good as yesterday but twice as good as I will be tomorrow.  

 

So onward to more flooring. Another use of bullnose instead of 'T' molding was the dining room entrance to the Florida room. Please note: in pix like these the wood color is exagerated by my camera. To your eye, the floor and molding are much closer in color. 

 

And here the dining room got done. The hall in back to the right leads to the master bedroom. To the left is the kitchen. Behind the french doors is the Florida room.  

 

Back in the master bath, Trish removed a shade screen from the half circle window. It let in the light for the first time and transformed the place. 

 

Off the master bath is a master bath walk in closet. It gets tile too.  

 

The master bedroom looked real sharp with the new baseboard moldings. The whole house did.  

 

Here we attach the stair tread molding to the top of the dining room step. Yes, we used whatever was handy as weights to hold it all down. 

 

Trish and Marc bought a decorative tile to face the steps. 

 

It will look nice with the new floor.  

 

Now the living room gets started.  

 

We got half done by the end of this day.  

 

I caught Kaycee chomping way on her sandwich. Guess I'm no longer her favorite uncle. 

 

Before we get the living room finished, a rug gets added and the family room furniture gets moved in.  

 

The floor set well over the ground out areas, with only a few weights to hold down the end.  

 

Sue took this shot of the master at work measuring up the final few tile cuts for the master bath. 

 

And here it is; one master bath tiled to order. It looked a whole lot better than with those little greenish things.  

 

The final room for the wood floor was the family room. It butted up against tile along two sides. Sean and Jones got the carpet and tack strips out of this room too. They did it in less than an hour and I didn't get any pix. Sorry! 

 

This room too soon fell to our well exercised mastery of the craft. Early into the wood floor stuff we developed a system. I measured, marked, installed and taped, while Sue did the cutting and planning and general organization. It worked well. 

 

The bath got grouted. The toilet and doors got reinstalled. This door needed to be shortened 5/16ths of an inch to clear the new floor. 

 

New baseboard here too. And that wall was not a 45. Closer to 33 1/3. Of all the angles you see in this house, none were 45s.  

 

Trish and Marc liked the results.  

 

Back in the living-dining area the decorative tiles got grouted and all the moldings were added.  

 

Here's how we left the living room.  

 

Trish figured out and installed a closet system for her master bath.  

 

It looked nice to me.  

 

Here's Trish and her new Family room floor complete with it's baseboard and special wood bullnose moldings.  

 

This shows the kitchenette area off the family room. It all looked pretty good to me. 

 

A parting shot of Sue and Jim after all the work was done. For the record, it included laminate wood in two bedrooms, engineered wood in the master bedroom, dining, living and family rooms. Tile in the master bath, closet and on two long steps. Some blinds, a closet shelf and rod, and new baseboards and other moldings throught the whole house completed the list. Much grinding, chiseling, hammering, hauling and leveling was needed to get'r done.  

 

Trish and Jim. We hope Marc, Trish, Sean and Kaycee really enjoy their new house.  

ps:  

On our drive back home, we hit a couple of showers in the Jacksonville area, but we really hit a mess just after passing I-20 in downtown Atlanta. Here's what it looked like on radar when we finally got home. We were down to 25 mph trying to see the road and tell the car ahead from the cars pulled over on the side of the road. It took an extra half hour, but we made it safely. Our rain guage at home measured 1.67 inches.