House On the Hilltop - Part Nine

Continued from House On the Hilltop - Part Eight

Before I get deep into this blog post, I thought I better let all my readers know that the past due pregnant cow that we are all waiting on has NOT HAD HER BABY YET!!!   I will say that as of this morning her stomach looked completely different (which is a very good sign)!! 

 



 

We are to the point of installing the knotty pine planking on the living room and kitchen cathedral ceilings now.  The planks are so beautiful, I love the knots in the wood. 

 

 

We had such a debate on what to finish it with.  (The planks in the dining room and upstairs craft room I painted, but these we wanted to leave natural.)  We played around a bit with wood stains and didn't like any of them, then we left the wood natural and tried a coat of poly and didn't like that either. At the advice of my daughter I looked into the Rustoleum product Watco.  She uses their food safe oil for her butcher block counter tops as well as other things in her home.  It is gorgeous. 

 

 

We chose their Danish Oil in Natural.  They offer many different stain finishes in their Danish Oil but we liked the natural look.  It creates the most amazing transformation on the wood.  It deepens the color, gives it a beautiful sheen (but not a shine, if that makes sense), and it dries and is ready for use very quickly. 

 

 

I do the cutting and oiling of each board and try to stay about 20 planks ahead of Eldon!  These planks have been oiled - see how gorgeous it makes them?

 

 

Getting started on the ceiling above the kitchen. 

 

 

Working our way up - almost done on one side!  I absolutely hate looking at Eldon up there.  It just about makes me sick.

 

 

When Eldon got up to the third level of scaffolding it no longer worked for me to climb and hand planks up to him so he rigged this rope system and I tied the planks on and sent them up!

 

 

One side done!  We also painted the large gable walls while we had the scaffolding all set up.  I love this color.  It is a nice light tan color called Elmira White by Benjamin Moore.

 

 

In the meantime I've managed to get all but the final coat of paint on my dining room ceiling.  I love this bright, happy white!  It is Simply White by Benjamin Moore. 

 

We also managed to get the planks installed on the ceiling of the upstairs craft room and I have the primer on.  I'm so happy with the planking...  the ones I've painted and the ones we've left natural.  It gives it such a warm feel. 

 

If anyone is interested in installing these planks, here's a bit of info for you. We purchased our first batch (for the dining room and craft room) from Home Depot. It was a good price at roughly 70 cents a linear foot. Then, in between finishing those ceilings and starting the living room and kitchen we went to Lumber Liquidators to look at some flooring and found out they also sell the tongue and groove pine planks. The quality seemed better and the price certainly was at 44 cents a linear foot. 

 

 

Installing this planking has been fun.  I realized that since starting our building and helping Eldon there is something I've gotten VERY good at.  It is reading a tape measure!  It seems strange as I've been reading a measuring tape for sewing for lots and lots of years.  But reading a measuring tape for building?  Hmmmm,  not so much.  When Eldon hollers down to me "I need a board at 68 and 5/16ths"  I don't even have to count the little 16th marks anymore!  And I haven't made any cutting mistakes!  I feel a huge accomplishment.

 

 

Its such an exciting time for us seeing things really take shape on the inside now!  Our cabinet man was here this week to take the final measurements on our cabinets and it just hardly seems real that we are finally this close! 

 

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.  We started out the day this morning with a big breakfast out in our house with our son, his wife and her siblings, and our daughter and her husband and our grand-babies.  Then we all went down to the corral so that Jillian could give Mercedes a bottle.  It was a great start to the day. 

 

 

Continued in House On the Hilltop - Part Ten