The Flooring

Our house will not have a traditional sub-floor with a finished wood floor on top of that. Instead, our floor will be one material to meet all requirements - structural, aesthetic, etc. The 2x6 tongue and groove pine looks easy enough to work with, but it's really taken us some time to get it down. More work than we expected, that's for sure.

January 8 was a gorgeous April day, with temps near 60, the stream rushing in the background, and sunshine all day long. Andy and Chris finished quite a few boards today, with Mindy and two boys showing up for a little while with lunch and a few helping hands.

You can see the rough hole for the stairs, and the overhang of the planks on the North and South walls. We'll trim all of that up later with the circular saw. It's much more efficient to cut one straight line than a lot of little cuts.

This is how the ceilings will look from the lower level and the dining room. The chamfer is a great touch.
Flat floor, a few holes for the future posts that will support the next level, some stacked flooring waiting to be nailed down, and in the foreground you can see the bow wrench. We use this to pull any wayward boards straight. It keeps the flooring nice and snug.

Later in the day, though we did complete a few more courses of planks before we threw the tarps over it all for the night.

No winter boots on this January day! We spent most of the day barefoot and in T-shirts. Perfect building weather, and way too early for bugs.