Day 21

The flooring guys got a good start--half the family room! Still several days of work ahead, so we don't expect to move back into the room until Friday.


This floor is "engineered" tigerwood. It is a hardwood, not a laminate, but it's built in layers of plywood with the true hardwood layer glued on top. This is supposed to help alleviate any problems with shrinking and expanding because of temperature and humidity fluctuations.

As with any wood floor, it will scratch and dent. According to the product literature, it has an aluminum oxide finish and may be sanded down to the bare hardwood and refinished up to two times. Or it can be "screened," where only the finish is sanded off and re-applied, an infinite number of times. Also according to the literature, scratches and dents may be viewed as giving "character" to the wood floor. Dogs and their toenails are one of the biggest sources of that "character." They even suggest putting booties on the dog's paws. Yeah, right. We just have to accept that with a really big dog, "character" is more likely to happen!

Meanwhile, the rest of the tiles for the backsplash have been installed, and half the grout has been applied. The tiles looked great before, but grouting provides such a finishing touch.