Hardwood Adventures

What does a beautiful snow covered photo of the mountain have to do with hardwood flooring you might ask? Well this was just a snap shot of the fun filled adventurous day that we had!

The hardwood was scheduled to be delivered last Friday, but unfortunately it didn't arrive in Flagstaff in time. So the middle of our first big snowstorm of the year was the chosen time by Fed Ex. Well planned! The morning began with much shoveling. We shoveled the driveway the night before since we were expecting almost 2 feet total. Wow, is that steep driveway slippery! I can only shovel going down...luckily a neighbor lent us a hand with his big snow blower last night. This morning, we borrowed the one we have at our rental house. Andy had quite the technique to slide down the driveway with it, but it was too little and wimpy to throw snow on the way back up. Looks like we will be investing in a pretty heavy duty snow blower for the house!

The flagstone stairs are amazing. Fairly easy to shovel and great for walking up and down instead of slipping on the driveway. After we finished all of the shoveling, we waited for our 8-9 AM delivery of hardwood from the Fed Ex depot in Flagstaff. After a few hours, the sun came out and the beautiful northern Arizona sun helped to melt the snow. Since we were still waiting for the truck to arrive, I played around with the camera.

 Some pretty impressive icicles form on the metal roof that doesn't have a gutter. They will fall onto the roof below which does have a gutter, so hopefully nobody on the driveway gets speared!

Close to noon, we finally learned where our hardwood was...stuck in the truck that jackknifed on Blue Willow, the entrance road to our neighborhood. So we drove down the road to take some more photos of the adventure! The driver was okay, just needed a tow. So waited for the wrecker and watch the truck be pulled all the way up the hill. In the meantime it started to snow again.

 Glad it wasn't our driveway that they are making nice big dents in with the tow truck!

Finally the Fed Ex truck made it to our house safely and we now have 5,000 lbs of beautiful maple tongue and groove hardwood. We started moving the piles (shown here in the garage) up to the bedrooms to allow the wood to acclimate to our dry climate and the heated floors in the house. 

I was amazed at how long some of the boards are, at least 10 feet. The widths vary between 4.5" 5.5" and 6.5". The real fun of Christmas vacation will be installing the wood!

Fireplace assembly

The replacement panel for the fireplace arrived and we were able to finish installing the panels over the weekend. We were impressed that they tried to match the brick pattern on the different walls to make it look like a real masonry fireplace. The screens are big and work well. We also installed the glass doors, but quickly took them back off so they won't get broken with all of the construction (I forgot to take a photo though!).

The big piece of alligator juniper that will be the mantle. It smells great! (Well it actually reminds me of Willis and and the smell of the wood chips in her cage).

After 1 day of stone work, the rock was about up to the top of the opening. 

On the second day, Kip and Andy installed the mantle and corbels. Then the guys continued the rock upwards. Unfortunately they have to use the left over large stones that we already have because the forest is covered in snow now and it's too hard to go collect smaller rocks for this dry stack look. We like the occasional large rocks turned sideways to help tie the outside rock work in with this dry stack look inside. These guys are amazing! 

 You can see how the upper half of the rock work is still wet from the day's work. 

Free shoveling

Arizona has reached an all new level of strangeness! People from Phoenix are stealing snow from Flagstaff and driving it down the hill for Phoenix kids to play in. Apparently they tried to collect snow from a hillside on Snowbowl road, but were chased away by the authorities because they were "stealing snow". So the guys ended up going around the neighborhood asking if they could shovel snow off of people's driveways. They shoveled over half of our driveway and John's next door...so we had free shoveling services, no complaints!

We drove down to Phoenix to pick up our tile and deliver it to Flagstaff on Saturday (we didn't know that we could have hauled snow down the hill with us to make some money!). Steve was nice enough to let us borrow the company's large flatbed diesel truck for the trip since 5000 lbs would have been a bit much for the Toyota to carry. Picked everything up and made it back up to Flagstaff all in nice weather.

 The large tiles are the porcelain for the bathroom and laundry room floors. The grey stone and green glass accent tiles are for the jack and jill bathroom and shower. 

 These are the accent tiles that we will use in the master bathroom to go with the Kashmir White Granite shower wall and counter top. We will replace just a few of the glass tiles in the left pattern with a red accent tile to give a little more pop!

Good old plain black slate like my parents have in their house. We will use this in the entrance ways and the powder room. The boxes look quite old...apparently nobody buys black slate! The guys said that the last person who bought some was doing an art project making chalk boards.

Marvin and his crew put the redwood on the front stairs and deck. The wood is very pretty!  They have to finish the railings and balusters and stain the redwood still.

The company that pour the gypcrete floors came back to level and seal the concrete. After a day of sanding and sealing, the floors look much better!  Installing the wood floor should be much easier.

Cabinets, doors and details

 

It's so exciting to see some of the finishing work beginning...that means it's getting closer to move in time. I'm ready to start putting our kitchen things in the cabinets and sorting out what goes where, but I guess it's a little too early for that! And it's officially winter here. The heat is on (except for the driveway, which needs shoveling!)

The cabinet installers worked for several days last week getting the kitchen, laundry and bathroom cabinets installed. The cherry in the kitchen is beautiful; it has much more character and warmth than I expected!

The refrigerator will fit in between these cabinets. In the bottom half of the cabinets on the right we have the slide out trays...no more losing canned goods in the back of the cabinet!

The laundry is a darker stain on knotty alder and the master bathroom is the darkest stain on knotty alder. We liked the darker cabinets with the light colored granite that we have picked out.

Here are some shots of the installers hard at work. 

The tile installer has been busy prepping the shower walls The granite fabricator came today to make templates so we are on our way to counter tops and flooring.

The doors are all doug fir to match the windows. We liked the 3 panel doors to be a little different than a standard 2 panel. Looks like the doors all ended up swinging the way we planned. 

 We picked out two pieces of quartzite stone to use as the fireplace hearth. They will go well with the malapai rock that will be on the chimney.

 The pile of stone for the chimney is growing.