The Pings: Jon, Jenny, Elton, Rafa and Charlotte

I had the day off and spent the better part of today organizing the garage. It was such a mess! In our frenzy to move into our new house, we basically unpacked all our boxes and threw the rubbish into our garage. We accumulated a ton of junk and I was half hoping that the hordes of boxes would magically all disappear.

We finally had some time to organize, and it’s been such an undertaking. First, we broke down all of the boxes, stacked up the nice boxes for later use, and took the extra cardboard and packing paper to the recycling center.

We also used our housewarming gift from Mom and Dad Ping to buy heavy duty storage shelves from Costco. Each unit can hold up to 600 lbs, and is very, very sturdy. Jonathan and I assembled them, got most of our junk off the floor, and finally got our garage organized. It still needs some work, but it looks a ton better, and hopefully, we’ll be able to use our garage for our cars soon!

Jonathan and Crystal unwinding after our busy day with the Wii.

The floor edges are hard to put in, so I had to shimmy into the closets and work from there. Here’s a picture of me in the closet.  It was a tight spot to be in, and it definitely did a number on my quads, but at least we’re getting a workout, since we’ve been so bad with our regular exercising!

Almost done! Just the trim and we’re ready to move in!

Our floors are down in the living room! We just need to caulk the edges and add some trim. They are gorgeous… Jonathan and dad did an amazing job!

Onto the bedrooms!

Finally!

It’s actually not that difficult. Grinding down the concrete seemed to be much more stressful than actually putting in the floors. Here’s a picture of us putting in the very first plank!

We place down each plank, then Jonathan puts a small line of glue onto the board’s tongue. He puts the tongue into the groove and taps it into place. We check that the boards are lined up properly and repeat with another board.

Jonathan putting glue onto the board.

A sample of our finished product! We still have to put in the edges and molding, but it looks great so far! It’s totally worth the effort!

Before we lay the hardwoods, we’re laying down a layer of blue foam. It’s suppose to act as a triple layer of protection: anti-bacterial, a moisture barrier, and a cushioning layer. We’re taping all of the pieces down with tape and then laying the hardwoods on the top! Almost ready for the wood!

Jonathan and the blue stuff.

Grinding went really well, but we decided to pour leveling concrete into the cracks and to be 100% sure that we were leveled.

Next step: Laying down the moisture barrier and floors!

After we removed our carpets, we realized that the soil shifted and that there was an inch step off. Luckily, it didn’t look like the foundation itself was damaged (so says Dad Sato), but unfortunately, it would have been impossible to lay the new hardwoods on this. We rented a concrete planer… It looks like a heavy duty lawn mower, except it has 100 or so sharp blades and cuts 1/8 of an inch of concrete off with each go. Thankfully, it worked perfectly, and our floor was sanded down in no time. Here’s a few pictures of Jonathan and Dad with the planer.

As you can see, the planer created a HUGE cloud of concrete dust! We spent an entire day clearing off all of the dust that settled.

Viola! Our finished product! It’s smooth and flat! Yeah!

We love it!!!!! It’s so perfect for our little family.

Our new back yard. It’s pretty sweet.

We’re going to do some remodeling so I wanted to post a few “before” pics!