Getting near the end of Phase 1; woot!

We're getting there. Can you feel it? The excitement? I sure can.

It's been a mix of getting things done quickly and starting things slowly; we're a bit behind schedule, a bit overbudget (neither of those are surprising), but it's satisfying to see our initial list of changes starting to come to a close. Sure I've still got some outlets to change and little paint touch up here and there, but that's minor in the grand scheme of things.

We're now all finished with painting the living room (no more ceiling painting for a while!) and we've started to put the laminate in. That photo there, by the way, shows the small portion of the flooring that we've finished (yay photo angle trickery) not the whole room.

Putting the floor in hasn't been that bad; we cleaned the concrete underneath, left a little note commemorating our little adventure here, put down the underlayment, and started cutting and laying down the laminate. It goes in pretty easily but still requires some tapping with a special block and a mallet to get all of the wood to fit together (it's a tongue-and-groove joint). We also ended up cutting some of the starting pieces into 2/3 - 1/3 parts (i.e. 1 row full, 1 row 2/3 length, 1 row 1/3 length, rinse, repeat) using my new miter saw to do the job. I won't bore with the gory details, for now, but it comes together well enough and we're to the point where the next move involves...the circular saw! Duh duh duh!

Anyway, with the painting done and the floor coming along it's really starting to look nice, and we can't wait to get the rest of the work done and have as many of you over here as we can. Goodnight!

PS: make certain to watch the slideshow to look at my witty comments.