Chapter 70 - The Sliding Doors, Wall Finishings and Floor of the Second Floor Left Hand Room

October 23rd - 28th 2013

Real life has invaded my mini-ing time.  There is always something to do.  We have an enormous pine tree in our front yard and when finally we had a Saturday without rain, the gardner came to prune it.  It took around 4 hours total but the work was done by Saturday afternoon.  There was lots of clean up.  In the meantime, I had a bookcase whose wheels broke so I had to make an Ikea wheel pick up and empty a book case (!!), re-install the wheels and reload the bookcase.  It had to be done as the bookcase was blocking my work bench where I am building the house.  What a pain.  And also, my beloved Red Sox are in the World Series so I was staying up late to see the games and too tired to actually do any mini-ing.  So, by the time I had some energy, 10 days had gone by.   But I am back ! ;-)

First thing I had to do was to paint all the wooden embellishments as usual.  Then I worked on painting the sliding doors.  There are extra inserts in the doors that needed some sanding attention beforehand.  After that, I fixed some of the wooden decorations of the walls so that the floor area was prepped for installation.  I painted the wood frames and internal areas and then decided it was time to attach the flooring.

Cleaning the internal grill areas to the sliding doors.

Adding the wall beams.

The kit came with a series of planks.  I had thought about painting them all black beforehand but rejected that idea when I realized that the best bet was to create the floor, paint it in a few coats of black, sanding it, varnish it, sand it, etc. but without actually installing the floor in the room.  I stumbled upon someone’s suggestion to attach the wooden flooring to a cardboard backing which then can be installed into the room.  So, after measuring and cutting, that’s what I did.

Flooring planks.

Measured piece of cardboard backing.

Some of the planks were not a perfect fit.  So I did have to sand some to size.  Once that was done, I painted the floor black, sanded and then varnished it.  Obviously over a day since the varnish needs a good day to dry between coats.  I even managed to touch it and leave a print so had to varnish it again! That meant more drying time before waxing and installing.  What a pain.  But in the meantime, I did manage to create the doors and varnish those as well.

Selecting the right side and position of the boards.

Checking the fitting for the last two.

Meeasuring and slowly sanding down to size.

Final fit before painting and varnishing

Sanding the floor and using the sanded dust to fill in the small gaps.

Sanded and ready for painting.

Coats of pain and varnish.

Assembling the doors and sanding the grill to fit.

Fitted grill.  Door before varnishing.

The door grill in the middle was supposed to be covered with some kind of rice paper, but honestly, I like the open space where you can actually peek into the room from the outside.  The way this room is decorated it doesn’t really convince me that it is also a bedroom (like the other rooms).  When I did do the research, I only found one pic of folded futons in the same room with a fire pit.  So, I am going to have to work out how to resolve this.  Maybe using the porch as the actual sleeping area?
Once the door jambs were dry enough, I installed the sliding doors and all the wooden decorations around the frames.  Course they all needed sanding for fitting but not so much to be difficult.  With the doors in, I really must say I like the strong contrast between the ochre and the black.  I couldn’t wait till the floor was actually dry enough to install!  That took another 24 hours.

Installed sliding doors and wood decorations.

Inside view of the room with decorations.

Floor varnished and ready for waxing.

Trimming the cardboard edge, waxing the floor.

Finished floor and doors. 

Finally I could wax the floor, trim off the extra edge and and install the finished floor.  But of course, waxing turned out to be a hassle.  The wax is fine but the floor being black shows every streak of wax on it.  May have been that the varnish wasn’t 100% dry but I did leave it on extra time.  Whatever.  I installed the floor and the final front piece.  Ready for the next chapter which may have to wait anyway as I’m a little busy with real life again.  Just wish I could devote my time to this build all the time.  Welcome to the real world.

Floor inspiration.