Back to work

First, I have to give Dave a big blog pat on the back for almost single-handedly getting the wall cabinets in the laundry room installed last night. Installing the base cabinets should be relatively easy since, believe it or not, our floor is pretty level... er and no one will have to hold them five feet off the floor while someone else drills.

I think I have decided to use the skinny cabinets in the laundry room as well for some additional storage and counter space. Dave is not entirely convinced just yet that it's a good idea. I think he's so used to wide open spaces after all these months that it's easy to for things to seem crowded to him... But as the person who actually uses the laundry room -- I know that any floor space left unused with cabinetry will not remain empty. Homeless stuff will end up stacked and piled there in no time. And it will irritate me. Besides, you just can't have too many cabinets.

Our latest trial has been the laundry/hallway threshold. As you may recall, we worked for many hours shaping a single three foot long piece of wood to fit the gap between the saltillo tile and the hardwood floor... And spent another afternoon mixing grout to fix the one gap we discovered once we set it in place...

What you may not know is that at that point we gave up for a little while. I finally got around to grabbing a tube of Liquid Nails and trying to glue it down into place -- only to discover that my Liquid Nails was a bit old and chalky and within a day or so the ends of the threshold popped up like spring daisies. Sooo.. I sent Dave out this morning to get some Gorilla Glue.

In between weeding sessions in the backyard - I set out to glue down the threshold once again. I immediately discovered that Gorilla Glue is not as gooey and substantial as Liquid Nails, however... and felt pretty discouraged when the glue simply seeped down onto the concrete beneath the threshold -- not even touching the surface I was trying to glue. I read the label again and noticed the warning: something about the glue foaming and expanding to 3-4 times it's volume within the first hour of curing. Perfect!! I squirted some extra glue down into the space and hoped it would expand enough to grab my threshold and hold it in place. Dave found me lying face down on the hall floor where a baby gate had collapsed on top of me while I was trying to hold the wood down long enough for it to dry. "How fast does this stuff dry?" he asked. "Three or four hours," I answered. He insisted that I would not be able to hold it in place for three or four hours... I still disagree... but didn't want to hurt his feelings. We weighted the strip down and went outside to weed again.

A couple hours later we returned to find copious amounts of billowy yellow foam oozing out of the threshold and onto the floor. *wince* Er.. we were able to scrape the majority of it off the floor after soaking it with mineral spirits... but when it all dries we'll still have some to sand and scrape and camoflauge. That is - of course - if it has finished expanding now. If not, we will have to cut our way into the room with a jigsaw later tonight to secure the remaining cabinets.