radio silence

My apologies for the radio blog silence. There has been a lot going on over here...

Unfortunately --with the whirlwind of activity-- I'm a little 'over' posting about it. Having lived it, I don't feel like regurgitating all of it in blog posts. Which makes me a bad blogger. I know this.

It's just a phase. I'll get over it, and I'll be back to regular postings soon. In the meantime, maybe you'll like like a Clif's Notes version of what I should be posting about.

I should write a post about how the fireplace went in on Monday. And I really really should write a post about the fireplace fiasco (not our fault) and how it was supposed to go in on Friday.

I should write a post about how the french doors went in. And then got taken out. And now they're back in.


I should also write a post about appliances. I should tell you the pros and cons of each brand, and I should definitely include information about price differences and rebates, but... blah! I'd rather just tell you that we're thisclose to ordering a few things...

I should write a post about the wood flooring going in upstairs.


And I should really, really write a post about how we're not going to make our May 31st timeline. In fact, I will write more about this topic soon.

 But not now.

wood flooring

I have made several trips to Lumber Liquidators lately, in trying to select the wood flooring for the house. We are going to lay wood throughout the entire house -- only the bathrooms will be spared.

John and I both knew that we wanted a dark-colored wood this time. We had a pale (birch??) wood in our Bay Area home, and we definitely wanted to do something different.

At the showroom, I immediately fell in love with this sample of bamboo flooring.

And this walnut sample. Oh my!

However, both are out of our price range.

Our solution: unfinished white oak... stained to match the bamboo sample.

The sample above is a piece of unfinished white oak, stained with two coats of Zar, oil-based wood stain, "Moorish Teak.". At $2.79 per square foot, the white oak is much more in our price range.

And then, something even better came along.

You see, the original plan was for John and me to lay the wood flooring. Afterall, we did it in ourselves in the Bay Area home. However, since we're in a bit of a time crunch, we have decided to hire our neighbor who just happens to specialize in refinishing wood floors. Who just happens to have a distributor who can get us an even better deal than Lumber Liquidators.



It always comes down to 'who you know', doesn't it?