I trust you had a good Memorial Day. Along with paying some silent respects, I spent the entire weekend getting busy with the setting of the wood tiles. After ripping the two 1 5/16″ borders, we nailed in the first one on the soffit side. Then, starting at 00001 in the sequence, I did half of the the first two rows (the ones and the twos) on Saturday. I really got rolling on Sunday, after which I had the first two rows done, along with the wall cuts that start on the second two rows (the fours and the eights).
Not a bad wall cut for a new guy, I’d say.
Monday was a half day, completing the second two rows all the way up to the front door before running out of nails. And needing a break anyway. Shook off some pain with a long easy walk with the dogs.
My feet, my legs, my hands, my back, and my right forearm are all telling me to PLEASE STOP, each by inflicting non-stop pain from its respective area of flesh and bone to my consciousness. My toes are especially sore, feeling like every tendon in there has been stretched in a torture chamber.
Used 6D 2″ finishing nails along with some heavy-duty adhesive used for decks. After nailing in the border, I threw two toenails into each of the two exposed sides of each tile, countersinking each about an eight of an inch below the surface. The tiles closest to the border have a single facenail going straight down about an inch in. Before setting each tile, I ran beads on the underside, and did some shimming where necessary, particularly along the area of the wall heater patch. The nailing itself was a real pain in the ass at first, with about 30 percent of the energy going into pulling out bent nails that got fucked up beyond repair. Those wood squares are like rocks. Hardwood floor indeed. It was then that I had the type of special revelation that you might call the lovechild of laziness and ingenuity: DRILL PILOT HOLES FIRST. So I did, and it got easer.
I did some math and realized that, provided I swung the hammer a minimum of eight times for each nail, plus another dozen using the countersink, I must’ve swung the hammer over two thousand times. And that doesn’t include the pulling and re-hammering.
The final border was ripped at 1 5/16″, which has now become apparently and predictably too wide. So tonight we ripped it down to about 1 3/32″ wide, which is just a hair wider than the gap. To keep things tight, final accuracy will be achieved by shaving off the outside edge of each square tile in that row of sixteens. I would’ve liked to have the borders perfect, and just slam the last squares in,but it can be difficult to control hairline measurements on an eight foot strip of wood. It’ll be easier to control things one square at a time on the chop saw.
I need to pick up more nails and adhesive tomorrow, and aim to finish the final border and last row of sixteens by Friday night. Then it’ll be time to move paintings and electronics to the other room, plastic all the doorways off, and rent a sander.
Getting there. Special thanks to Hector “El Tool Hombre” Banuelos.
Lookin pretty Tigole!!