Bamboo Floors

Half of our first floor is covered with Easy-Lock bamboo made by Bambo. This is engineered flooring and goes in really easy. The bamboo surface itself is 1/4" thick with standing support ridges and has a green flaky substrate that makes a complete mess when cut.

That's a stack of unboxed bamboo in front of the deck doors. The cardboard in the foreground is a temporary protective cover so the high volume of contractor traffic doesn't thrash the floors.

Circley Square

Carlos and Tim spent some of yesterday finishing soffit for the front porch. It's now starting to look like finished construction; the porch is just about done save for metal roofing, railings and decking.

That's Dave in the photo. He spent all day with us yesterday laying bamboo flooring in the living room. Dave and Cynthia both have been a huge support for us and we can't thank them enough for their generosity.

The title of the post is somewhat literally inspired by the circle-shaped cutout for the can light and the square support framing in the soffit. In thinking of the circle and square, we took a line out of an absurd music video called Hands Are Bananas.

Subway Tile

These wall field tiles are 3" x 6" and are sometimes called subway tiles, presumably because you find tiles this size and shape in subways all over the world. These particular tiles are handmade and are about 3/8" thick. We picked them up at Dal-Tile here in Portland.

This wall will have tile running all the way to the ceiling since this is the corner into which we'll place the clawfoot tub.

Rear Deck Framed

Yesterday Michael and Jeff were back on site and they finished pulling the deck framing and stair stringers for the rear entry deck and front porch. The lower deck in this photo is the "recycling bench" on which we'll store our recycling and trash bins. The lowered deck makes it easy to toss things in from the back door and to move them on and off the deck to get them down to the end of the driveway for collection day.