Home Project Fiascos

Hey there. I'm dropping a quick little bullshit post just to say that I'm still here. It's sort of a mini life update and maybe a small rant, for flavor.

So anyway, I've started some new house projects that are taking up a lot of my time these days. The first is a wooden ceiling for our living room.

We are installing a tongue and groove Douglas fir (clear) slat ceiling thats meant to mimick a Californian mid century modern home. The project is strickly cosmetic, for nothing more than MCM vibes. The slats will go between the existing faux beams in the photo.

For this project it was such a challenge to source the wood though, I almost couldn't believe it.

I called a store ahead of time, on a Friday, to inquire about inventory and was told that the store has a few hundred feet of clear Douglas Fir. Then I showed up the next day on Saturday and was told at the counter that they don't have any of it in stock.

"We don't have any clear Douglas Fir, just knotty. You might want to go look at it."

In my head: "What? But I called ahead this time!?!"

We went to the yard with a staff member and after some searching around we found the clear fir, but they didn't have very much of it and certainly not as much as we needed. We needed 108 boards total that are 7 foot long. For the project though we could buy 7, 8, 14 or 16 foot lengths because I can cut them myself down to the 6ft 7in length we need. Any other size (9,10,11,12 foot...etc) would create too much waste.

Back inside we went to call another store. This time we were told that they have a large stock of clear Fir.

Excellent! We get in the car and drive to the store in another town.

On arrival we're told by the clerk that they don't have any clear Douglas fir in stock...

What the actual F is happening!?! I about lost my mind in that moment.

The clerk called over to another one of their stores even further away and amazingly they had a shit ton in stock. This time I asked them to go out back and physically count the boards before we drive over there. We never heard back from them though. Time to problem solve.

The clerk we were already dealing with said that they couldn't order in new stock until their existing was gone. They also couldn't order in specific lengths of boards because basically the mill makes the boards whatever the length of the tree that's is being cut. The clerk then said that she can order us the wood to be delivered to our home but it would cost 25% extra for sorting. Or we could switch to clear cedar wood which costs more than double that of Douglas Fir.

Fine fine just give us a quote for sorting the boards.

A few days later she tells us that the mill can't sort the wood but they can go look at the pallets they have and try to eyeball the stacks to see if they can grab one with as many 14 footers as possible...

OK, now your just being stupid.

After multiple calls and emails over 5 days we moved on from that company and my wife found another store that would deliver everything we wanted in the size we wanted either, 8 foot or 14 foot. We chose the latter. The only kicker was that they said it would take 4 - 6 weeks to get it in, so wouldn't be arriving until early to mid September.

Fine fine fine.

I pivoted projects then and decided to complete our laundry room. I had 4-6 weeks to get it done and assumed it would be closer to 6. That should be plenty of time. The room has been in disarray since we moved into the house two years ago, after I found and fixed a leak that was flooding the basement. I also damaged a large sheet of the gyproc wall when I built our mudroom in the adjacent space and that has been open to the studs this entire time as well.

We spent a weekend sourcing tiles and other materials. We ended up buying a tarrazzo tile. It's bold and a bit of a risk but it's got great MCM vibes so we went with it. If we like it in the laundry room we plan to install it in the foyer as well. The black chips are actually navy blue, you just can't tell in the photo.

Last weekend I did some major demo in the space and we installed some drywall in the room and I did the taping and mudding after work each night for a week.

A few days later my wife received an email from our wood supplier informing us that the wood is ready to be delivered, basically 4 weeks early...

The wood was delivered into our garage on Thursday. So now I have two projects on the go: a laundry room that has been fully demolished, and a massive stack of Douglas fir sitting in the garage taking up my parking space and knowing my luck, just itching to warp on me.

Friday I cut the 14 foot boards down to 7 feet to make them more manageable. My wife has started to sand and prep them while I continue on the laundry room. Yesterday I started tiling the floor.

I'll keep you updated on both projects as they progress! Today I plan to finish tiling the floor in the laundry room.