Carpet Has Arrived!

Yesterday the plumber came out to hook up the hot water heater for the radiant system so that when we got everything hooked up and finalized we could get heat downstairs. We needed to get the heat going yesterday because the carpet layers need the house to be 70-75 degrees so they can properly stretch the carpet. So around 5:00 yesterday night, we got the system all hooked up. We hooked up a hose to it to start filling it with water and due to some bad flux, we sprung a lot of leaks:( It was so frustrating and what seemed to be impossible to fix because the system is not something you can just easity take apart. By 10:00 we finally got the system up and working, but it takes time to heat up all the concrete. The water was going into the system at about 120 degrees and coming back at about 60 degrees when we left and by the time we got there in the morning it was returning at about 70 degrees. We also had a little problem with our furnace, but the HVAC guy came out today and is getting it fixed for us.

So, we did get the heat up to about 70-75 degrees and the carpet guys were working away. Since the carpets are making the house feel a lot more finished, I decided I wanted to take the paper off the hardwoods. I know it will get extremely dirty again, but it was so nice to see the hardwoods!

Since we were getting carpet, we had to clean everything out, including the air conditioner that has been sitting in our basement for so long. It feels so much bigger in our basement now! You can also see how we finished out the bar face and the pole in the basement. We were also experimenting with the copper in the bar, and it was not turning out like we had hoped.

The downstairs fireplace had been hidden for so long by pieces of sheetrock too, so it was nice to see the fireplace again.

Here are the pictures of the radiant system. The top portion is where the water goes into the ground hot and the lower portion is where it comes back after travelling through the ground.

The pipes then run over to the water heater and then it is all one big recirculation loop.

We finally painted the theater room black, but it was not as easy as we were hoping. The wainscoating was prepainted, so the finish was not even. Some places were shiny and some places were dull. So, we tried to sand it off and the columns then got some white highlights showing through giving it an antique look, but the wainscoating wouldn't sand to look the same. So we decided to paint it again, but this time with a flat/matte finish. Thanks to the patient efforts of my dad, we got the theater room looking good again. I still haven't cleaned the lens of my camera so the spots in the picture are from my camera and not in the room.

So upstairs, there is tack strip and carpet pad down and in the master, the carpet is laid out and two of the seams were radio waved together. I think the radio waves is somewhat of a newer technology, and it works great because I don't think I could find the seam anymore.

I forgot how big the master bedroom was too, until we took out the tub that was sitting in the middle of the room.

Here's one last picture of the hardwoods again...