Projects at Mike and Joan's

We left Maynardville, TN on Monday after almost a week there.  It was an easy drive to Red Bay, AL with good roads and average traffic the whole way.

We had plenty to do at Mike and Joan's and spent a couple of days working of some projects around the house.

First was replacing the front door.

Things moved along fine with the first part of it.  We removed the door, and then the frame and trim around it.

The new door went in fairly easy.

The bump in the road happened with the fancy door handle and dead bolt.

The dead bolt went in pretty quickly.  The door handle under it did not.  It was a real head scratcher.  We didn't realize the there is a universal mechanism inside to pull and turn to make a right hand latch into a left hand latch.  Once we got some instruction back at Lowe's showing us that, we went back and finished installing the handle.  It took probably an hour to line every thing up and get the thing secured.

Next, we worked on the bedroom.  First, we pulled old carpet up and removed the carpet tack and form padding.

Then the ceiling was painted, and we tackled the walls.  Pam took down the old border wall paper.

And we started putting the new laminate flooring down.

It took the better part of two days, but the floor got finished after a quite a few breaks...

It turned out well and then we moved all the furniture back into the bedroom.

Besides doing something productive, I think we like helping out and learning things.  Some things I learned:

• Installing doors. There is more than one way to install a door.  In this case, we removed the door from the frame,  plumbed it and then secured it. Other times I have installed doors with the door left in the frame.
• Door handles.  We knew about right hand and left hand doors when we bought the door at Lowe's.  We were surprised by the door handle latch that was for right hand doors.  We learned door handles have a universal piece you pull out and twist to make the latch point the other way.
• Laminate flooring.  I don't know if I have ever installed it but it is very easy.  Especially with the foam, sliding floor backing on each piece.  Once you get a system down, it goes fairly fast.  As long as your knees and back holds out...

That was the crux of our projects at Mike and Joan's.  It was fun, we learned some more things and were happy with the results.

Thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles!