Day Five-fifty-eight: woody words

In case you don't get the reference, it's to this classic Monty Python bit. Today was out fourth 11-hour day on this project. We're getting there and aim to be done tomorrow, hopefully without needing another 11 hours but something always manages to surprise us.

Naturally step one was to remove the rest of the maple.

Others may have been methods, but we used a tried and true one to get the boards up. First, insert wedge (in this case a chisel) to make some space between the board and the subfloor.

Then insert your leverage makers. Here a prybar and hammer do the trick. With appropriate leverage and steel the poor maple doesn't stand a chance.

If the nails didn't come up with the boards then we used a vice clamp wrench to pull them out.

What slowed our progress today was an abundance of tricky edges and angles because of our decision to work around the cabinets (and the maple left under them). To fill this odd space...

We had to notch the board and cut off parts of the under side to fit over the tongues.

And voila!

Then there was that 45-degree angle around the shelf we made. The old power miter saw came in mighty handy for these cuts.

So here's how we ended the day. The threshold is all set.

And we're in the home stretch now. Just straight cuts from here on out.

All of this work with hard woods (maple and oak) has caused a few casualties. This saw blade for the Bosch multitool looks like a hockey player.

And we learned the hard way that the chisel doesn't provide as much leverage as the prybar.