Magic Box of Samples

We spent the weekend slathering more joint compound on our walls. We would have put on more, but my poor spouse was sick all weekend with a bad fever. He's a little better now, but still not great. So, I did what I could on my own. Progress was made. Pretty much the whole room has the first coats except for the ceiling. Because of my old back injury, doing stuff over my head is really hard for me. My nerves get pinched and my arms end up going numb. Not very conducive to doing ceiling drywall taping. Still, I managed to do some.

We've also been doing other sorts of research, such as on washing machines/dryers. The ones we got when we moved in are okay, but they like to eat clothes sometimes. We'll also be moving the location of our laundry room, and machines capable of different configurations might be beneficial, such as a front-loading washer (that way we can put more storage on top).

We also found out that Teragren, who makes that bamboo flooring we liked, is a local company. So, we ordered up a box of samples.

Here are the ones that we liked, the Synergy line. It's oriented strands of bamboo. The strands are more carefully oriented than in OSB. The color we like is the Java, in the center.

Apparently the Synergy line is generally used in commercial applications. It's 100% harder than red oak (2200 on the hardness scale, as I mentioned before). It has a 25-year finish warranty, and its production adheres to LEED standards. So far, we think it's pretty good stuff. Even though it's an engineered floor, it's the same material all the way through, instead of a veneer over a different wooden core. So, if we ever needed to refinish, we can.

And, just for the heck of it, here are some other products of theirs. There were even more samples in the box, like bamboo plywood and butcher block, but these were the most interesting.

I liked my magic box of samples. It'll come in handy once we have the clay up on our walls and want to test for color, and it's also nice to see how the different colors look during different times of day.