Payson Possible: Flooring Completed For The 2nd Annual 4th of July Peep Shoot

This was our first extended time of being at the Payson home since Christmas, though that week it was only myself as Laurie had to work. We have tried to schedule the rest of our vacations this year to coincide with holidays to take advantage of the extra day off. So we came up for this 4th of July holiday week to complete our flooring installation and to have our MR KLUD friends up for a 2nd annual Payson 4th of July celebration and peep shoot.

Our first task was to install the last piece of vinyl flooring in the master bedroom. After removing all the furniture, I used the nail gun to lay a new set of ring-shanked nails as we did in the other rooms. We then realized that we would need to chip away some of the bathroom tile because it came too far into the bedroom (was visible with the door closed). We will have this tile replaced in the future to match the hall bath and laundry room, but we need to leave enough vinyl in the doorway for the tile guy to know where to stop. I thought chipping away the tile in the hall bath was tough, but this was even worse and I am hoping the whole floor will not be like these few inches. Once the room was clean after all the work mentioned, we were able to lay the flooring. As we spread out the piece for this room, we found that Lowe's had not done as good of a job cutting this piece as they had the others. This piece was cut at an angle and we had to rotate it to allow enough overlap to go out the bedroom door, but it did not leave enough to go through the bathroom. Due to the size of the room, we already needed to splice a piece for the closet (something we did not have to do in the other bedrooms) and now we would need to splice a small piece at the bathroom door. Apart from this issue, the flooring went down easily and the cutting process was very quick after learning on the other three rooms. The time consuming part was splicing pieces for the closet and bathroom. We did not spend a lot of time trying to match the pattern in the closet since it will be hidden by the closet door, but after an initial attempt in the bathroom opening, we had to find a better matching piece as it did not look right. The documentation for the flooring recommends overlapping the two pieces of vinyl to be spliced and making one cut. This worked very well as long as it was one continuous cut. One time I stopped and switched directions and that did not work very well where the two cuts met. Once the ends matched, we laid the special vinyl tape on the floor and secured the seam.

The tile came up easy, but the hardiboard was another story

Even with the multi-tool scraper, it was tough

Chipping it away little by little

Enough ground cleared to lay the vinyl

Trimming around the door

The final piece of vinyl completed

Color changes based on the light angle - this looks lighter

The small matching patch to the bathroom entrance

The last task we had to do to prepare for the carpet install was to trim the vinyl in all the door openings. In each of the rooms where we laid the vinyl, we left a little extra protruding past the doorway. We decided to trim back to the center of the door jam and then let the carpet guys tell us know if we needed to trim more. Laurie took care of the trimming task and found a straight edge she could use to make the proper cut. Now we were ready for the carpet.

Laurie trimmed the vinyl on the doorways of the master bedroom. . .

. . .the guest bedroom. . .

. . .and the den

Saturday night we went with some friends to the Payson Summer concert series held in Green Valley park. It is a program that has a different band each Saturday night throughout June and July. This particular night the performers were Junction 87, which is three guys who play country music. We knew they were good as we heard them in a local restaurant a few months back. Apparently they are a local favorite and the park was packed. After the concert, we played some pool with our friends at their house and then made plans to hike the Tonto Natural Bridge the next morning. We have never been there and it was beautiful. We hiked down under the bridge and then hiked along the stream to the other end of the park. After the hike we had lunch in Pine at the Randall House, another place we have never been, which had been recommended by some people who used to work there. Lunch was very good, but our favorite is still the Early Bird Cafe. After lunch we walked through the Pine 4th of July Craft Fair which was held this weekend. What a great couple of days with friends and seeing new things.

Laurie, Denise, and Bob on the walkway to the Tonto Natural Bridge

Us in the opening under the bridge

Denise and Bob in the same opening

I had a couple of small projects to do to get the house ready for our 4th of July company. A few weeks back when we were getting the hall bath set up, we could not find a towel bar that Laurie liked to go over the toilet, but we were able to find one online. We brought it up this weekend and installed it. We also needed a new shower curtain and rod. These items we picked up in the valley at Bed, Bath and Beyond. We bought a curved rod similar to the master bath, but with only a single rod instead of double. I had some concerns about the installation because of the tile around the tub, knowing that if we did not drill into the tile (which I did not even want to attempt), the rod may be too high for the curtain length. At the store we happened to find a pressure fitted curved rod and was able to install this (no drilling required) right on top of the tile and have it whatever height we wanted.

New glass shelf and towel bar from Amazon.com

New pressure fitted curved shower rod with curtain

The next item for the hall bathroom was to finish the small linen closet that is behind the door. The walls inside the closet had been completed, but I needed to cut the shelves and install the brackets to hold them. I did not want to install complicated, expensive brackets in this small closet, so I decided to use the small L-shaped clips that have a pin that fits in a hole in the wall like what are used in kitchen cabinets. I cut four shelves out of melamine we bought awhile back for this purpose and then measured and drilled four holes per shelf. The holes in the drywall side of the closet were not as tight as I would have liked, but the tightness of the shelf helps keep the clips in place. I may eventually need to come up with a different solution, but it is working now. I put the original door back on the closet since the stain on the wood is pretty close to the color of the bathroom vanity and plus it is hidden by the bathroom door. This is another item that may get replaced later as it is a little skewed making the top of the door come out of the opening a bit.

Shelves in linen closet

Original door back in place

The den double doors needed to have their knobs installed so we did not have to pull the bottom of the doors to open them. We used dummy knobs which are called "dummy" because there is no mechanism to them. We used these types of knobs because they look like the other door knobs we installed for the bedrooms and bathrooms. No holes were required for installation, just screws to secure the knobs. Since I was putting one knob on each side of the door, I had to offset the screw holes so the knobs lined up correctly but the screws did not run into each other.

New knobs on the double doors - the ones on the other side look the same

On Monday the carpet installers from Home Depot showed up to lay our new carpet. There were two guys who came all the way from the valley just to do this one job. The main installer said the job would not even cover the gas for the round trip. We let them take over the main area of the house while we isolated ourselves (and the dog) in the master bedroom and kitchen. They installed tack strips around the walls and where the carpet would meet the ceramic tile, but where the carpet met the vinyl they installed z-bar strips. This type of tack strip holds the carpet like a normal tack strip but then allows them to bend the carpet over the edge, which is a metal strip, and then pound the metal down to the floor to hold the carpet in place. This is better than using a separate transition strip. The installer had to make a quick run to Home Depot as they did not bring enough z-bar to complete the job. The whole install only took about four hours and the carpet looks really good. It definitely makes a difference in the look of the house. One downside of having carpet is it caused two doors that swing into the room (the pantry and hall closet) to drag on the carpet. I had to take both doors out and trim about a 1/4" from each. After that they worked fine.

Long hallway before carpet. . .

. . .and after

Short hallway before carpet. . .

. . .and after

Great room before carpet. . .

. . .and after with Zena and Laurie testing it out

Another view of the great room before carpet. . .

. . .and after, but Zena was done with her test

Our new floor and expensive furniture ready for 4th of July guests

We did not do any more work the rest of our holiday week. We had our MR KLUD friends come up to help celebrate the 4th of July as we did the year before. Each couple spent one night with us and we were able to spend time together as a group and then some time with each couple. We took a walk around Green Valley lake with one couple and saw all the bats come out at dusk. As a group we visited the Tonto Natural Bridge and took a different trail than the last time we went. We also saw some Javelina in the park and picked some wild blackberries. The guys then spent some time getting all our pellet rifles sighted in so we could do some peep shooting. Peeps are the marshmallow chicks they sell at Easter and this year each couple had their own rifle instead of sharing one amongst seven people (Matt was with us last year). We also had different colored peeps this year and came up with a scoring system based on those colors. The teams were guys against gals and unfortunately the gals won. One couple stayed until Thursday and after inspecting a couple thrift stores in town, we both left Payson for the valley. Laurie and I could not stay any longer as we had a flight to North Carolina Friday morning for a friend's 30-year retirement party from the Navy. It was a great week with the flooring getting completed and being able to share our place with our friends.