…and we are still working. And making progress! Probably our biggest—and certainly the most time consuming—project is the floor.

Because Ben is working from cottonwood lumber (rather than pre-finished flooring), there is a ton of work involved. Each board must planed for thickness and skip-planed for visual effect (see below), ripped on the table saw for width, run through the joiner for straight edges, then hand-routed to create ship lap joining. Then, the board comes into the dining room’s paint booth for five coats of clear finish. Finally, each floor board nailed down in its place with antique cut nails.

Forgive the dirt and dog hair…it’s a never-ending battle!

You can see the skip planing in the top left corner of this photo.

Here you can see the old sub floor (dark on left) and our cottonwood floor board (lighter on right).

…and the floor marches on! We are almost to the half-way point on the main floor. It will be a big happy dance day when the new flooring reaches all the way to the pantry door! Just a few more feet…

Happy new year!