I'm Floored

Well, actually, to be honest and correct, I am about 50% floored, but it is progress nonetheless. We have finished the living room and gotten the furniture put back in place. That freed up the kitchen, which is next. We have also completed the hallway and one of the spare bedrooms (the one we use for an office). We still need to paint that room before we can replace the baseboards and put up the quarter round, but the floor is done, which is the big one. Here are some pictures for you.



This is the living room, with all the trim done but no furniture yet. All of these photos were taken with my cell phone, so they may or may not turn out well. Just use your imagination please haha.



Here is our hallway closet, not much to see here, just a shot of the flooring.



The office and its closet.



From the office to the hallway, if you'll notice, I was able to make it all one piece with no transition, no threshold, no nothing, just smooth floor.



I was able to accomplish this by using the above piece of wood. It's called a spline, and it lets you reverse the direction you are laying your tongue and groove. Basically, you have to nail the tongue side of the board, and you can't put groove to groove without the spline. That little piece lets you reverse direction, meaning I could lay the hallway in one direction, then come back later and add in the bedroom, reversing direction of the lay. Confused? It was easy to do, but maybe hard to explain. I have since found out that professional installers now start in the middle of the longest room in the house and use the spline to allow them to lay out equally in both directions, so that they have an even sized piece at the edge of room on both sides. I'm no pro, so I didn't do that in my living room, but if I ever did it again, I would probably go that route. It was that easy.



Here's a closer up view of the transition. Nice and smooth!

The project wasn't without it's hiccups though. It is definitely much slower doing it without help. I have had April a few days, and I had a buddy from work one day. I was about three times more productive those days than when I'm alone. Just the amount of cumulative effort of getting up and down, swapping out tools, etc. makes a huge difference.

The first 'oops' I had was before I laid the first board. I wasn't sure if the nailer I had borrowed would work for my floors, so I decided I would remove all the nails from the gun and give a board a test hit, then judge from the impact the tool left if it was hitting in the right spot. The nailer is actually a stapler, and the staples come in long rows like you would get for your desk stapler. I pulled out all the attached staples, took a look down inside, and decided that I had gotten them all. I tossed a board in the middle of the room and gave it a whack. The good news was that the nailer would work just fine. The bad news was that I had just stapled a board to a random spot at a random angle smack in the middle of my living room! Apparently it grabs the next staple and stores it in a 'chamber'. Oh well! I got the board up with a little effort.

Anyhow, we are rolling right along. If I didn't have to dodge all the stuff in my house (i.e. if the house was empty) we'd be alot further along, but hey, I'm still having fun. Let me know what you think.