Hardwood Floors Days 9 and 10

On the second weekend of the hardwood installation we installed the flooring in the hallway and living room area. On Saturday Donald had to work and after four hours of laying floor and seeming to be getting no where I decided to call in for reinforcements. Two hours later my father was here and ready to work.

  It felt like we were making good progress until my father realized he has been here for four hours! It only felt like one hour and both of us wished with went this fast. By the time Dad left we had the living room finished. The next day a few more rows in the hallway for laid. Sorry no pictures of it.

Thanks Dad for your help! 

Hardwood Floors - Day 3

On the third day of flooring we used the floor nailer in the third bedroom. The other two were already done, at least where the nailer can be used. Plank after plank, cut after cut we placed the boards and secure them in place. There was a little too often that I would accidentally step on the edge of an unsecured board and crack the groove off of it, but we just replaced it and carried on. After one long weekend we had three rooms floored. Here is how it looks:

Before installation began.

During

After

Hardwood Floors - Day 1

In order to start this project I decided to use a PTO day on Friday and work on the project over the long weekend. The plan was to start with flooring one room to see how it turned out. That quickly changed, thankfully, and the demo started in all three bedrooms on the upper level at the same time. By the end of day one we had all the furniture moved to the basement, carpet ripped up, trim taken off and two rooms had the squeaks in the floor resolved with screws. We rented a floor nailer for two days that evening to make the next days more smooth. Here are some images after day 1:

Room 1 ready for the hardwood

Room 2 clear of carpet

Room 3 ready to cut wood

Anyone that is exposing the subfloor I highly recommend reinforcing it with screws to avoid and elimate squeaks. There have been many nights I have kept up because of the squeaks from the roommates walking upstairs. Not anymore!!! Hahahaha :-)

We also vacuumed around the edges of the room since this is most likely the only time the trim will be removed for a long time. If you have pets or funny smells in your house it is a good idea to mop the plywood with warm vinegar water until any smells are gone. Make sure to let it dry! 

Hardwood Flooring

I'm sorry it has been so long. It's just been really busy. I'm going to try and start blogging again and hopefully keep it up this time! We have started some more remodeling throughout the upper level of the house! 

I am not a fan of carpet, probably because I absolutely hate cleaning. Ever since I bought the house I wanted to get rid of this carpet and have beautiful hardwood. Well about a month ago I received my bonus at work and thought about paying off some debt (student loans/mortgage) but then Donald and I came across Lumber Liquidators and saw some hardwood flooring we could afford. Well not really... But they did have no interest for 36 MONTHS!!!

Naturally, at first I did not want to continue with the idea. After all I am very cheap and why would I want to have a payment for the next 3 years? Not only that, but the flooring that we can afford is solid white pine UNFINISHED at $1.29/sq ft. My first issue was the pine, would it really hold up? My second issue was the unfinished part. That means a lot of extra work. My third issue was that to have it installed was twice the price of the wood alone, let alone to have it stained. There was no way I was paying that much! So before the sale ended, which happened to be the next day, we had ordered our new wood flooring to be installed by us! I was excited, but knew finding time is going to be tough. I had a little bit of buyers remorse and worry about the amount of work this is going to be.

One week later Lumber Liquidators call to inform me that the order is ready for pickup. We went and rented a Uhaul truck on a Saturday morning to pick up the wood. It wasn't until they brought out the two forklift loads of wood that we realized how much wood we bought. 1,000 sq ft. sounds like a lot, but seeing it is much more scary! It took us two hours to load and then unload the wood all the way up the stairs into our living room. It's a wonder the floor didn't cave in. Here is a picture of the wood to be installed:

On the plus side, I had at least three days to rest from moving the wood. They say to let it get used to your house temperature and humidity for a minimum of three days. We took a week and a half to be safe ;-).