Itch Partially Scratched.

Well, I did it.

I finally got to spend a winter night at the cottage.

There was a method to the madness. Or at least a reason. Christine spotted a wicked good deal on vinyl flooring at Lowe's recently. 17 boxes later, we'd decided the living room floor and hallway were going to get beautified (and perhaps the bathroom. And/or the area around the stove. Maybe the kitchen. It's all open to debate).

But it has to get worse before it gets better. So on February 20th, I started tearing stuff up.

The original thinking was that Christine and I would drop stuff off, she would head home to look after the wiener tots, and I would spend the night. Then my dad would meet me, or my rapidly-cooling corpse, the following morning.

There were some concerns but none of them caused any grief.

No water, no problem! Brought up a jug.

Was able to keep the place warm just fine between the wood stove, the baseboard heaters and Furn the furnace.

Brought up the ingredients to make a (fake, of course) pepperoni pizza.

Listened to some Waterboys and chopped away at my floor. Later, a bottle of port provided fire in the belly.

I had a great sleep on the couch in the living room. Made a hot chocolate when I woke up, drank some of it outside after it started snowing slightly, then got to work again for a while. By that point, I was pretty far along.

The good news is that the plywood looks great so far. It doesn't appear as though any of the original floor will need to be replaced.

Of course, this kind of project is rarely without a surprise or two. We found out that this was the second set of tiles that had been put down. And to even the floor out, some kind of leveling mortar was applied in some areas between those sets. Fantastic.

But it's all good! Now I know that I can spend a night out there in mid-winter so long as the temperature doesn't dip too low. I'm planning on doing so again March 12th to push this little reno along even further. The rest of the tiles need to come up and the quarter-round needs to be removed. Then we're good to go with sub-floor, foam padding and our own vinyl flooring. I really want it done before we start to go regularly. Doesn't seem like it'll be a problem.

As for the floor itself, it'll look a little something like this.

"Driftwood Oak" by Stainmaster.

This is a big one. When we're done with the floors, we have a few other fixes and improvements we want to complete in the dining room and hallway and if everything goes according to plan, it's going to look gorgeous. I can't wait to flip from demolition to construction.