Kitchen progress

A lot's been happening in the kitchen. Most important, Al has redecked the floor, replacing the odd-angled floorboards mentioned in a previous post with OSB; he also put in a window where there was none. Here's the latest:



Compare that with the original, pre-move-in picture:



Whew. We're now ready for sprayed-on insulation under the floor in the crawl space, and cellulose in the walls and ceiling. After that, it'll be time for drywall, then real hardwood floor, kitchen cabinets, and a myriad other things.

The why-to-for of spongy floor

A few things struck us as "we'll need to fix that eventually" when we first toured the cottage back in May. One item on the list was the sponginess of the kitchen floor. It was so bad that every time someone walked over it, the silverware in the drawer jingled. It wasn't until we pulled up most of the layers of the floor that we realized the cause. It's apparent in this photograph of the subfloor, after all layers of underlayment, linoleum, vinyl, foam, and veneer woodlike flooring had been removed:


The section on the left was original construction, the right side was an addition. It's easy to spot the demarcation point. In fact, it's easy to see where the original wall plate had been fastened to the subfloor deck. The original planking on the left had been laid properly, at about a 30 degree angle. I don't have a protractor handy, but I'd estimate the addition's planking was laid at about a 60 degree angle, which caused long runs across the floor joists. The planks visibly deflect when walked on; the situation wasn't much better when all the layers on top were present.

Al's ripping up the remaining odd-angle planking. It will be replaced with an engineered oriented strandboard.

More artifacts

Hello again. The last couple weeks have found us busy with plenty of interior work, which I'll share with you in good time. For now, this post is filled with more artifacts -- from the ceiling and crawl space.

Our carpenter Al has really gotten into this archaeological stuff. He's read some of our earlier posts about the nifty period items we've found, and has truly gotten into the spirit of discovery. In fact, all of the items shown in this post were collected by Al.

The first few items were found in the attic. This chair, for example:


We'd take it down to the lake and have a little picnic, if we thought it could support the weight of one of us. Or even our cat.

The matching chaise doesn't look like it could bear much weight, either:


Somewhere under the dust and grime are some vivid colors, I'm almost certain.

Say, while we're in a picnic mood, let's not forget the cook stove, also from the attic:


Flatware is a necessity, too. This fork was retrieved from the crawl space:


Also in under the cottage were a few tools of various utility. This saw may have come in handy at some point in the distant past:


Pliers are important for most any job -- except when they've been rusted shut and are growing barnacles:


And finally, perhaps the most intriguing artifact we've seen:

En garde!