Putting Ethan's birthday present to good use.

At a surprise party on Saturday for my brother's 30th birthday, I gave him a nice new saw blade designed for making fine cuts in nice wood.
He was a bit confused by the ten-inch blade, because his handheld saw uses much smaller 5½ inch blades.

Then I showed him his real present, a new Ryobi table saw. He was very surprised!

Sunday morning, we put the saw together and continued putting in the hardwood floor in the living room of Ethan & Kelly's new house. Don't worry: we still have all our fingers.

We worked from 10 o'clock in the morning until after 7 in the evening. When we finished for the day, we had completed the living room floor.

As you can see, we also took up all the old tile in the entryway. Ethan is going to install new tile there to match the tile in the kitchen.

We also left an space in front of the back door for few rows of tile. Our next challenge is the hallway and our first doorway. I also gave Ethan an undercut saw designed for cutting through door jambs and surrounding trim. We tested it on the left side of the doorway leading into the study. It seems to work well. The trick we haven't figured out yet is how to angle the planks in under the door jamb, but so that the tounge and groove can still lock with each other.

After we finished for the day, Ethan treated me to dinner at Mangia Pizza. We started off with a pitcher of locally-brewed Live Oak Pilz, and then consumed about two-thirds of a medium Mangia Mia stuffed pizza.

Those pizzas are big!

All in all, it was a very fun and productive weekend. Tonight I'll have dinner with an old colleague of mine and taking a look at his new MacBook Pro. I've been thinking about getting one for myself, so I'm eager to see what it's like.