Back at the pantry floor. And life, it's....I don't know.

So.  Hi.

It's been a bit, I know, a week and half-ish.  Our lives did a 360 on us or a 720 or who knows what.  July 20, in the morning, after breakfast and some cheese, Hailey unexpectedly and suddenly passed away.  The sheer terror, the utter panic, the...I don't even know.  Traumatizing.  We are profoundly devastated and from the bottoms of our souls bereaved.  There are no words to describe, really, it's so excruciating.  She was our world -- everything we did, we did for her.  We bought her a house, for goodness sake.

Almost a year old you are here, my sweet baby doll.

My little soul puppy.

Thankfully, I have an extraordinary and smart husband.  Not only did he, does he, and always will love that silly little pea, he had the wherewithal to say, "I have to take you out of town, right now, get away from the house," so we left.  The one place I always want to be, home, was, and now is, a place that's so upsetting to be in.  Thankfully too we have friends like Scott and Corinna who helped us get through last week.

But life has to and does keep moving forward, I hear.  It hurts.

Sorry to start this post so glum, but such are our lives right now.  To keep busy I turned to the pantry floor project since it's something I need to get done before starting work on Monday for Sirens.

This past Saturday, I stopped by to see Twitchy one last time and collected a handful of wood.  I think I also stopped by Menards that day as well to get the floor underlayment I had picked out online.

Today I began fitting pieces, filling in the last little areas and along the opposite wall.

It was tricky and I was concentrating hard to not cut my fingers off with the saw, but I got all the bits and ends and pieces in.  I have all my fingers intact.

Ah, there's that Lemon Curd paint color.  It's nice and bright and cheery, dontcha think?

Next up was the underlayment.  I rolled it out to measure and cut which is super easy because it's just rolled foam, sorta like the packing material kind.  Not the highest of quality in underlayment maybe but I didn't need nor want anything supremely fancy.

After measuring and cutting came feeble attempts to stay on top of my brain.  To keep all the pieces of wood in the same order I painstakingly laid them down in, I stacked them in reverse order in small piles, placed the underlayment, then re-placed all the wood pieces.

As I was re-placing each piece, I gave any scruffy edges a light sand by hand so as to not mess up the patina.  Slow and onerous maybe, but a power tool here would not have been the right choice.

Once all the pieces were down, my next decision was the small step.

I had picked up some thinner, narrower pieces of more slat-like wood and fitted those onto the top and face of the step.

Mike suggested painting the edge face of the tread which is a great idea and what I will do.  I might try to find a piece of half round to cram into that gap on the side of the step.  Or slice a thin piece, I'm not sure yet.  Those slat pieces also help wedge the floor pieces too, an added bonus.

Next up, nail all those suckers down.  My woodworking friend Scott, sheesh, he....he's been such a great friend to me.  He loaned me his compressor and nail gun.  Even gave me brads in two different sizes.  I didn't ask, he offered; I'm loathe to loan out my own tools as something inevitably goes awry, so his seriously generous overture was humbling.

Messy image, I know.

And of course something went awry because it's me.  The nail gun stopped working.  After going over and through it and over it, I discovered a brad got stuck.  Then I couldn't get it out.  Then it wedged itself further.  After talking to Scott on the phone, with assist from his girlfriend Corinna, we got the darn thing out but then it wasn't seating the brads right....Sigh, heh.  After a long day at his job, he came by and fixed it.

A tiring day and I'm exhausted.  I couldn't get going on the "grout" but I'll do that tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for following along with me through these projects, for following my tales of Hailey, her cancer, our quiet lives now, for reading along.  To take time out of your busy lives to read what a modest little DIY'er is doing with her house, I'm appreciative.

So, this week I'll wrap up that floor and take care of those ugly television/cable wires thanks to my friend Janette.