The Old Man and the Street

John Necs and his father arrived right on time this morning at 8:00AM. They spent the day rough sanding the second floor bedrooms and hallway; our house now has the cool clean smell of a lumberyard full of freshly sawn oak. And I love the way the raw wood looks–you can’t see the beautiful grain, but you know it’s under there. Here’s the master bedroom floor rough sanded:

And they did a little patching work on the steps:

They’ve got a few more days of sanding to go, but it’s already obvious that these guys are doing their work very carefully and very thoroughly. We’ve got until Friday morning (Oct 1st) to pick a stain, and the finish goes on on Monday.

At some point in The Past, some resident of the house decided that they wanted a telephone jack near the radiator in the living room, and this particular radiator is in the back of the living room, which is near the front of the house. You may recall that the front of the basement had a drop-ceiling in it, so noodling up between the outside walls to put a jack in wasn’t really possible without messing up the lovely basement drop ceiling. So this person decided that the right thing to do was to:

• Drill a hole in the floor in the front of the living room a full inch from the baseboard.
• Staple bell wire aaaaaaaaaalllllllllll the way along the baseboard to the back of the room.
• Screw a phone jack into the baseboard using 1.5″ wood screws.

Bell wire, jack, and screws are now resting comfortably in the bottom of the garbage can.