Back from Vermont, where we focused on house projects. We’re in Charlottesville for pockets of time mostly around when our kids will be here for college breaks, and while we’re here our DO list is filled with tiny little spruce-up details. After all, we’ll soon be putting the house on the market!

The big one (other than “list and sell the house”, which isn’t even on here yet) is the dining room flooring. Over the past year, we’ve redone all the upstairs floor. It used to be wall to wall carpet. It used to be white. It was so new when we first saw the house 20 years ago, the owners had put a plastic runner down to keep the dirt to a minimum while they sold. After 20 years of kids and dogs and Virginia clay, the carpet was pretty disgusting.

The cost of new carpet is astonishing. To spend the equivalent of 3 months’ cruising budget for something that we figured was likely destined almost immediately for the landfill (hardwood floors are definitely more appealing to many) and was not particularly environmentally friendly in the first place . . . it was hard to rationalize. When we realized we could put in bamboo flooring for a fraction of the price plus we could do it ourselves, it was a bit of a no brainer.

Note to self: putting in hardwood flooring yourself is not fast. But wow is it worth it.

We’d redone the kitchen in this house in 2009, pulling down a wall and moving a bathroom. Part of that particular project involved replacing the 1970s era vinyl flooring with bamboo floors, which worked well with the existing red oak strips especially once we had those floors refinished.

The dining room floor backs up to the kitchen. It was still the existing parquet. Dark, stained in places, and disintegrating in others, the floor was not a high priority for us. Until we finished the upstairs. All of a sudden, leaving the floor there didn’t seem like a good idea. Plus, how hard would it really be to do one single room after dealing with the whole upstairs?

Each one of those squares consisted of 6 or 7 (I lost count) individual strips; most of them had to be pried up individually. That was backbreaking, hammer and crowbar labor that took most of the week leading up to my leaving for Annapolis. Then the floor had to be sanded down and swept a couple of times before the bamboo could be laid down.

Jeremy had most of it done by the time I was back from the show. Now we’re onto the small details, the painting and quarter round trim.

What do you think?

We’re planning to set up camp in Deltaville starting the beginning of November, to make massive progress on the boat. We’ll be in Charlottesville for January and much of February. Keep an eye on that DO list!