NOTE:  There are no photos in this post.

TUESDAY 06 August 2024 — Continued cleaning, floor measurements and drawings, and dinner out with a friend

Linda continued deep-cleaning the kitchen cabinets but took time out as needed to help me measure the oak floors in the main level of the house.  For some time now (years) we have been considering having the oak floors refinished and getting new countertops for the kitchen.  More recently we have been discussing the floor refinishing as a “sooner rather than later project.”  Linda spent some time looking online for floor refinishing companies and found three that were relatively local and had good reviews.  One was a father-son team, another was a somewhat larger firm, and the third one was a bit larger than that.  All of them were local businesses, not franchises of larger chains.  She gave me their contact information so I could call them to set up appointments, which I deferred until tomorrow.

With our decision to move ahead with the floor refinishing, I wanted to have a fairly accurate understanding of the extent of flooring involved.  Our mental project list included replacing the vinyl tile flooring in the kitchen pantries, replace the existing “baseboards,” adding baseboards to the closets, and adding shoe molding to the kitchen base cabinets and island.  (The existing “baseboards” are the same 2-1/4” door casing used to frame out all of the doors.  We want those replaced with actual baseboard that matches our floor, as best as can be done.)  Some trim work was needed along the exposed edges of the floor in the entry/foyer, specifically oak nosing.  We also wanted to remove/replace the railing around the staircase to the basement, a potentially major project in itself that we will do ourselves.

Rather than dig in to the electrical work, which was also relatively high priority, I started creating the floor layout in my QCAD software as I wanted to have it done before contractors showed up to look at the job.  The front entrance/foyer, hallway, dining room, and kitchen are one odd-shaped, but continuous. flooring surface that extends into three closets, but not the kitchen pantries.  After getting reasonably good measurements for the wall lengths and positions, I divided the space up into rectangles so I could calculate square inches and convert it to square feet.

We wrapped up our work a bit earlier in the afternoon so we had time to get showers, put on nicer clothes, and drive to Ypsilanti to have dinner with our friend, Kate.  We picked her up and headed down the street to Plant Based Coneys on Cross Street (next to the Side-Track and Frenchie’s restaurants).  We had Coney dogs (very good), French fries (really good), and dessert; root beer float for me and enormous brownies with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce for Linda and Kate.  All vegan, of course.  Not being a bar or a coffee shop, and having somewhat uncomfortable metal furniture, we moved to the Panera on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor (next to Whole Foods Market) for coffee and continued conversation.  We were there until they closed at 10 PM, returned Kate to her house, and drove home.  US-23 between Ann Arbor and Brighton is in the middle of a major road construction project, but at that hour of the night, traffic was flowing nicely.

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